- UCAS course code
- LR22
- UCAS institution code
- M20
Bachelor of Arts (BA)
BA Politics and German
- Typical A-level offer: ABB
- Typical contextual A-level offer: BBC
- Refugee/care-experienced offer: BBC
- Typical International Baccalaureate offer: 34 points overall with 6,5,5 at HL
Fees and funding
Fees
Tuition fees for home students commencing their studies in September 2025 will be £9,250 per annum. Tuition fees for international students will be £26,500 per annum. For general information please see the undergraduate finance pages.
Policy on additional costs
All students should normally be able to complete their programme of study without incurring additional study costs over and above the tuition fee for that programme. Any unavoidable additional compulsory costs totalling more than 1% of the annual home undergraduate fee per annum, regardless of whether the programme in question is undergraduate or postgraduate taught, will be made clear to you at the point of application. Further information can be found in the University's Policy on additional costs incurred by students on undergraduate and postgraduate taught programmes (PDF document, 91KB).
Scholarships/sponsorships
Residence abroad support
We offer dedicated financial support packages of up to £2,000 for residence abroad students, based on household income.
You will be automatically assessed for this, based on your Student Finance financial assessment - you just need to make sure you apply for a financial assessment in the academic year in which your residence abroad will take place.
You may be eligible for this scholarship if you fulfill the following conditions:
- your qualifications were achieved at a state-funded school in the UK;
- your total household income does not exceed £60,000 (as verified by the Student Loan Company);
- you achieve high marks in your A-levels (or equivalent qualifications), usually AAB or above;
- you apply to (and remain on) either a single honours Language course, or a dual-language course.
Awards will be made according to a sliding scale, benefitting those who have achieved the highest marks relative to backgrounds.
You will be automatically assessed for this after you have registered on your degree.
You simply need to make sure you allow the University access to your records when applying for your student lLoan (we cannot otherwise assess your eligibility).
Course unit details:
Politics by Numbers
Unit code | POLI20311 |
---|---|
Credit rating | 20 |
Unit level | Level 2 |
Teaching period(s) | Semester 1 |
Available as a free choice unit? | Yes |
Overview
POLI20311 will draw very widely from across the discipline, focusing on fundamental questions which should engage student interest. The goal of the course is to introduce students to the idea of using data to resolve central research questions across the discipline, and to the methods used to gather, analyse and criticise data used in politics research. The topics examined in the course will cover the wide range of politics research, focussing on four broad areas: legislative/parliamentary studies, public policy, political attitudes and international relations.
Lectures and applied workshops are designed to complement each other, without overlap of learning outcomes. The lectures will introduce the substantive research area, and then the workshop will introduce main datasets used to explore it, the overview of their research design and quality, and enable students to perform simple guided analysis of one of these datasets. Each substantive area will have two lectures and two applied workshops committed to it. The first of each set will introduce the area and variety of data broadly, and the second will focus on a narrower question and one specific dataset to analyse.
Aims
This course will introduce students to a logic of quantitative data analysis and interpretation in multiple substantive areas across the discipline of politics and enable them to engage in active secondary data analysis.
Learning outcomes
Upon completion of this course, a successful student will:
- Learn about how to find quantitative data to answer questions driving political research, such as: do political institutions shape public attitudes towards democracy, why do nations go to war, are governments responding to the public in their policy-making, who are the people claiming to represent us in parliaments.
- Learn about how academics researching politics gather and use data, with an introduction to some of the most widely used data resources, such as election studies, public attitudes data such as World Value and European Social Surveys, UN and OECD data and many others.
- Learn about which questions can be answered with quantitative data and which cannot.
- Be able to evaluate data from the point of view of quality, design and method of collection;
- Develop a critical awareness of the strengths and weaknesses of different methods of gathering data and applying them to political research questions;
- Understand and analyse some of the central questions in politics research that have been addressed with the use of quantitative data;
- Develop a critical awareness of the use of data in political and media debate;
Syllabus
POLI20311 will draw very widely from across the discipline, focusing on fundamental questions which should engage student interest. The goal of the course is to introduce students to the idea of using data to resolve central research questions across the discipline, and to the methods used to gather, analyse and criticise data used in politics research. The topics examined in the course will cover the wide range of politics research, focussing on four broad areas: legislative/parliamentary studies, public policy, political attitudes and international relations.
Lectures and applied workshops are designed to complement each other, without overlap of learning outcomes. The lectures will introduce the substantive research area, main datasets used to explore it, the overview of their research design and quality, and then the workshop will enable students to perform simple guided analysis of one of these datasets. Each substantive area will have two lectures and two applied workshops committed to it. The first of each set will introduce the area and variety of data broadly, and the second will focus on a narrower question and one specific dataset to analyse.
Lecture 1: Introduction: thinking statistically for non-statisticians and those bas at maths
Workshop 1: Introduction to/refresher of a statistical software package and basic analysis techniques such as distribution, mean tendency, cross tabulation
Lectures 2 and 3: International relations (introducing comparison of means T-test and ANOVA)
Workshop 2 and 3: International relations
Lectures 4 and 5: Public policy (introducing correlation and simple linear regression)
Workshops 4 and 5: Public policy
Lectures 6 and 7: Legislative studies (introducing controlled cross-tabs)
Workshops 6 and 7: Legislative studies
Lectures 8 and 9: Political attitudes (introducing multivariate linear regressions)
Workshops 8 and 9: Political attitudes
Lecture 10: Exam preparation and overview
Workshop 10: Trouble shooting and exam preparation
Each of the lectures, in the course of substantive discussion, will also introduce and reinforce key methodological lessons:
- Critical data evaluation and assessment
- Interpretation of data
- Main intermediate methods of quantitative analysis: each of the substantive sessions will introduce or reinforce one to two methods of analysis and introduce their strengths and weaknesses and ways in which they should be applied
Each of the workshops will guide students through the steps of data analysis, and then give them a problem set to work on their own. Students will also practise interpretation of their results. During each of the workshops, students will be asked to record their activities in the statistical software and submit it on blackboard. This will be the basis of their partial formative assessment.
Knowledge and understanding
- Learn about how to find quantitative data to answer questions driving political research, such as: do political institutions shape public attitudes towards democracy, why do nations go to war, are governments responding to the public in their policy-making, who are the people claiming to represent us in parliaments.
- Learn about how academics researching politics gather and use data, with an introduction to some of the most widely used data resources, such as election studies, public attitudes data such as World Value and European Social Surveys, UN and OECD data and many others.
- Learn about which questions can be answered with quantitative data and which cannot.
Intellectual skills
- Evaluate data from the point of view of quality, design and method of collection;
- Develop a critical awareness of the strengths and weaknesses of different methods of gathering data and applying them to political research questions;
- Understand and analyse some of the central questions in politics research that have been addressed with the use of quantitative data;
Practical skills
- Develop a critical awareness of the use of data in political and media debate;
- Gain an ability to seek out relevant data sources
- Learn how to use SPSS to manage and analyse data
Transferable skills and personal qualities
- Improve the ability to interpret and communicate quantitative findings in writing and verbally.
- Gain an exposure to a diverse set of widely used data sources
- Gain an ability to conduct independent simple analysis of data
- Gain a working knowledge of a widely used statistical software
Employability skills
- Analytical skills
- Most employers now look for data skills, and this course aims to introduce the logic of dealing with data, an ability to understand very common logic underlying most simple statistics, and a practical, basic to intermediate knowledge of one the most popular statistical software programmes for data analysis: SPSS.
Assessment methods
Weekly tutorial computer output 10%
Weekly Blackboard tests 30%
One 2-hour exam: 60%
Feedback methods
Weekly computer outputs will receive weekly feedback on Turnitin, focussed predominantly on completeness and accuracy of the output.
Recommended reading
Each of the substantive areas will have its own short reading lists.
The main handbooks for this course will be:
Bryman, Alan (2016). Social research methods. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 4th edition, Part II
Field, Andy (2017). Discovering Statistics Using SPSS. (5th Edition). London: Sage.
4th edition of “SPSS statistics for dummies” 2020, by Keith McCormick and Jesus Salcedo.
Study hours
Scheduled activity hours | |
---|---|
Lectures | 10 |
Tutorials | 20 |
Independent study hours | |
---|---|
Independent study | 170 |
Teaching staff
Staff member | Role |
---|---|
Maria Sobolewska | Unit coordinator |
Additional notes
Tutorials will take place in computer clusters.