BA Thesis Colloquium

Course Details

Course Website: https://nanzhang-polisci.github.io/BA_Colloq.html

Course Instructor: Nan Zhang

First Group Meeting: Tuesday, 10 February, 10:15 - 11:45 in A 302 Seminarraum (B 6, 23-25 Bauteil A)

One-on-one consultations: by appointment, either over zoom or in A 508 (A 5, 6 Bauteil A)

Course Description

This course involves support for writing a BA thesis in political science. In this thesis, students will conduct independent research on a chosen topic which we agree upon during the semester. Students will need to design and carry a research strategy that includes (i) identifying an original contribution to a body of literature, (ii) finding or generating appropriate data, and (iii) conducting a rigorous data analysis. This colloquium is designed to help students progress along each of these steps by providing periodic feedback from the instructor.

The thesis should be in the range of 8-10,000 words (shorter is better!), and no more than 35 pages (including references, title pages, abstract, etc., but excluding any appendices).

Course Structure

Essentially, this colloquium operates as a venue for students to obtain rapid and constructive feedback.

After the first session (10 Feb), we will no longer meet as a group.

Rather, students should plan on attending at least 3 one-on-one consultations throughout the semester.

These consultations are mandatory, and you can sign up here.

Let me know if you cannot make these times. We can set up alternative times to talk over zoom.

Thesis Deadlines

The thesis registration deadline is 5 March 2026. Please send me a pdf version of the registration form via email.

The thesis must be submitted by 28 May 2026. You should submit an electronic copy to me via email. If you conduct quantitative analysis you will also need to submit electronic copies of your data and any syntax files (i.e. R or Stata code).

Thesis Milestones

Overall, I find it helpful to divide your work over the semester into several concrete milestones:

Deciding on a research question:

What does the existing literature already say about your research question and – more importantly – what are the “knowledge gaps”?
How will your proposed research contribute to advancing that literature (i.e. what is original here?)
Do you have the data and statistical skills to actually answer your research question?

Finding data and choosing an appropriate empirical strategy to analyze it:

What data sources will you use (given your own methodological skills and interests)?
If the data are not yet collected, how will you collect it?
Is any data preparation that needs to be carried out before it can be analysed?
What will the final dataset look like?
What are your hypotheses (i.e. empirical predictions about relationships in your data)?
What methods of analysis will you use to test your hypotheses?
How will you assess / rule out alternative explanations?

Writing:

How will you structure your paper?
Does each paragraph have one (and only one) topic sentence? Does the rest of the paragraph support this topic sentence?
What Tables and Figures will you include?
Most importantly, what should / can you cut from your paper?

How I Grade

I read the theses as if I were in the role of a “peer reviewer” for an academic journal. This means that I will mentally run through the following checklist:

Is the research question interesting / important for political science?
Are the theory and hypotheses logically elaborated? In other words, is it clearly explained how / why the independent variable(s) should affect the dependent variable?
Are the data and analyses appropriate for testing the hypotheses? In other words, how well do the empirics “match” the theory?
Are the statistical analyses correctly implemented and interpreted, and are appropriate conclusions drawn from the data?

These are the main determinants of your overall grade. Writing style and formalia will only have minor impacts (if at all).

Rules about AI usage: you must precisely document and explain how you used AI in your research.