Psychologists run experiments, political scientists analyze existing data
Seth’s statement here and his follow-up comment reminded me of a big difference between psychologists, who like to do experiments, and political scientists, who like to analyze existing data. I’m always impressed that when a psychologist wants to learn something, he or she will typically run an experiment. Whenever I’ve tried to run an experiment, it’s been a mess. Which makes sense: I’ve been analyzing data continuously for the past 25 years but I have very little experience with data collection (and that is mostly helping others with their data collection projects).
Yes, I realize that some political scientists do run experiments, but I’m not usually so impressed by them, certainly not in comparison to psychological experiments. Political science is a different sort of field, it doesn’t lend itself to experimentation so much. Small n and all that. (But Seth might disagree, since he’s a psychologist who does small-n nonrandomized experiments.) And, yes, I realize that political science data gets collected: certainly the people who run the National Elections Study, the Pew survey, Polimetrix, etc., do data collection. But I think I’m typical of most empirical political scientists in that I spend much much more time analyzing than collecting data.
Comments
“Whenever I’ve tried to run an experiment, it’s been a mess.”
Heh, psychologists have the same experience :) We just have to either keep tweaking it until it is right, or deal with flawed data. And there is a ton of flawed data out there.
Data in psychology is supposed to be open for inspection so we can make the determination for ourselves, but it doesn’t always work out that way. Some researchers are just unwilling to be open. In PoliSci, most of the time all it takes to get data is to pay, right?
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July 30, 2008 04:41 AM
I think it’s important to differentiate between empirical political scientists who study regions of the world endowed with impressive amounts of readily accessible data, and political scientists who study the developing world, where data is either poor or missing. In the latter case, you do have to generate your own data, through surveys, semi-structured interviews and - increasingly - field experiments. In fact, graduate students who study the comparative politics of developing countries typically spend 12 to 18 months of their graduate career generating (or trying to generate) their own data.
Posted by: Claire Adida | July 30, 2008 04:31 PM
What do you think about the Gerber & Green (et al.) school of field experiments to estimate campaign effects?
In the American Politics subfield at least it’s now common to conduct randomized trials to evaluate political campaigns. Direct mail, phone banking, canvassing, robocalls, radio & tv ads, and text messaging have all been evaluated in multiple randomized clinical trials over the past 10 years - primarily as GOTV methods but to some extent as persuasion. The sample sizes of these field experiments are normally huge.
Methodologically, the shift from survey research based on self-reported data to randomized field experiments has been critical in accurately evaluating campaign tactics. From this perspective whether you are re-analyzing existing survey data or replicating past survey research, no amount of funding will reduce bias as much as a solid randomized trial. If every model is misspecified let’s switch to research methods that minimize the influence of specification on our estimates of average treatment effects.
What is it that impresses you about psychological experiments (of dubious external validity when based on freshmen psych students) compared to campaign field experiments? Looking forward to your presentation on Friday by the way.
Posted by: Chris | July 31, 2008 11:33 PM
There is lot of difference between political science and psychology. Both use different method for analysis. I think very hard to say about these subjects.
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