Course-Based Research Assignment: Literature Review and Theoretical Expectations (POLS 469)

Abstract

This assignment was the product of a Research-Intensive Course Grant through KU’s Center for Undergraduate Research & Fellowships. These grants provide financial support and advising for instructors who want to incorporate larger research and creative projects into their classes. Each file is made available in both an editable format (docx or pptx) and pdf format.This assignment was created for POLS 469, an upper-level political science course focusing on authoritarian propaganda. The mini-assignment serves as a critical component of a larger course project where students develop an original research report investigating the production, dissemination, or effects of authoritarian propaganda. Students are given multiple approaches to their final project: they can examine specific propaganda sources (news outlets, TV shows, social media accounts), analyze propaganda's impact on public opinion or behavior, or pursue other approved topics. This mini-assignment specifically focuses on developing the literature review and theoretical framework portions of the research paper. The primary objective of the assignment was to provide students with an understanding of different approaches to specifying social science theories and research contributions. For the assignment, students need to identify several relevant academic studies, identify their key insights and the larger debate they are a part of, and determine a possible gap in the literature that their paper might address. Building on this preliminary literature analysis, students should identify the variation of interest and the specific social and political variables they might examine and develop concrete testable expectations about the relationship between these variables