The Importance of Research Design in Political Science

Receiving five serious reviews in this symposium is gratifying and confirms our belief that research design should be a priority for our discipline. We are pleased that our five distinguished reviewers appear to agree with our unified approach to the logic of inference in the social sciences, and with our fundamental point: that good quantitative and good qualitative research designs are based fundamentally on the same logic of inference. The reviewers also raised virtually no objections to the main practical contribution of our book– our many specific procedures for avoiding bias, getting the most out of qualitative data, and making reliable inferences. However, the reviews make clear that although our book may be the latest word on research design in political science, it is surely not the last. We are taxed for failing to include important issues in our analysis and for dealing inadequately with some of what we included. Before responding to the reviewers’ more direct criticisms, let us explain what we emphasize in Designing Social Inquiry and how it relates to some of the points raised by the reviewers.