Research

Active learning has become a cornerstone of political science pedagogy because it encourages students to engage directly with course material through analysis, reflection, and problem solving rather than passive information consumption. While quantitative methods courses have long relied on active learning through hands-on data analysis, substantive courses in international relations and political science often treat quantitative methods as separate from the substantive content students seek to learn. This separation contributes to a perception that quantitative analysis is a technical exercise rather than an essential tool for answering political questions, reinforcing both psychological barriers to quantitative methods and students' uncertainty about their relevance to the discipline.

This chapter invites international relations educators to consider how quantitative data can itself serve as an active learning strategy. We also provide some low-demand ideas about how quantitative data can be deliberately integrated into the lessons and assessments that are already a part of substantive political science courses. Rather than emphasizing statistical computation, instructors can use quantitative evidence to promote interpretation, conceptual reasoning, and evidence-based judgment. Activities such as simulations, structured debates, policy memos, case studies, and classification exercises require students to use empirical indicators to revise arguments, compare cases, operationalize concepts, and justify decisions in response to changing evidence. In these settings, quantitative data becomes a constraint on reasoning that encourages students to update their understanding of political phenomena rather than merely illustrate concepts introduced in lecture.

Embedding quantitative reasoning within substantive inquiry helps students recognize the relevance of empirical evidence to political science while reducing the psychological distance between methods and substance. By engaging students in authentic disciplinary practices, including concept formation, classification, interpretation, and evidence-based argumentation, quantitative data advances the goals of active learning and prepares students to think more critically about both political phenomena and the methods used to study them.

The influence of Latinos on all aspects of the American political landscape has increased dramatically in recent years. However, research on political participation among Latinas has been scarce. This study examined the factors influencing participation in protests, a type of nonelectoral political behavior, among Mexican women. This research was based on surveys with 290 Mexican women from the Chicago area and explored the role of their levels of economic, social, and household empowerment in explaining participation in protests. After controlling for a number of demographic and political factors, it was found that women with higher levels of social and household empowerment were more likely to participate in protests. More specifically, women who did not need permission from their husbands to leave their house and those who had fewer domestic chores were more active in protests. 

Political knowledge is the foundation of many of the key concepts and processes underlying political attitudes, with empirical social science research typically relying on unidimensional measurement strategies developed for use in the US. I argue that while this strategy may at one time have been appropriate for a system such as the US, such an approach is less valid where the practice of politics is organized around different processes or salient political issues. In this study I consider how cross-national variation in political systems influences the accumulation of political knowledge in different political contexts. I leverage data from multiple cross-national surveys, spanning over 80 individual countries, to demonstrate that the discipline’s current approach to political knowledge underestimates the true complexity of how the information citizens use to navigate their political environments is organized and distributed. Results show that cross-national knowledge items are more likely to reflect differences in item construction than what citizens know about politics. Further, tests of dimensionality indicate that intentionally constructed knowledge batteries in low- and middle-income countries demonstrate multiple political knowledge dimensions.

Previous scholarship in American politics has used correct responses to a battery of civics knowledge questions as a useful proxy for citizens’ latent abilities or attitudes. While providing clarity in how information correlates to engagement in a specific context, the knowledge domains captured in standard batteries are not easily translated into a comparative setting. Comparative scholars have long recognized that institutions, political norms, and identity interact to impact the differential utility of specific types of information across countries. In this paper I examine the degree to which different knowledge domains are more or less strongly associated with citizen political engagement.