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Matt A. Barreto ::

PS 280B: Research Methods in Race, Ethnicity, Politics (REP)

Winter 2024, Wednesday, 2:00pm - 4:50pm, Luskin Pub Affairs 2292 

Course Description:

This is the second course in the REP Field Seminar sequence and builds on PS280A. Most of you started a research project in PS280A in the Fall quarter and now in the Winter quarter we will work on finishing it. This course will review, dissect, discuss and debate some of the different research methods that are used in REP scholarship and assess the advantages and disadvantages of different approaches and methodologies. Students will be expected to write a research paper, and give a presentation, using one an appropriate methodology, and to defend that approach. The emphasis of this class is to absorb as many different and diverse approaches to doing research on race, ethnicity and politics and to understand the benefits and limitations of each approach.

Each week, students are expected to complete all of the assigned readings and to develop two critical questions for each author we read. You should prepare a short summary of each of the readings, and then your two critical questions for that reading. In addition, you should come prepared with one example of a research project you could implement using that week’s methodology. These must be hard-copy print outs to turn in during class and we will start out each session sharing ideas and brainstorming research projects, research design, and methodology.

Phones and laptops should be put away during class, and used only to supplement your participation in class.  You should not be staring at your laptop screen during class, you should be listening, thinking and interacting with the other people in the classroom.  No online communication can take place during class including email, messaging, chat.  Readings are to be done BEFORE class starts. This class is a discussion, so you are expected to come prepared to discuss, critique, question or praise the readings.

Readings:

Each week there will be required readings from the assigned scholarly journal articles and the course textbook. Readings should be done for the day they are assigned. Article readings are all accessible online via JSTOR, Google Scholar, or from the UCLA library. The complete, week-by-week reading list is posted below.

Course books:

Weekly Reading Schedule (subject to change)

Week 1: Defining Race and Ethnicity Research

Phinney, Jean S. and Anthony D. Ong. 2007. "Conceptualization and Measurement of Ethnic Identity: Current Status and Future Directions."
Journal of Counseling Psychology.  Vol 54, No. 3.

Quintana, Stephen M. 2007. "Racial and Ethnic Identity: Developmental Perspectives and Research." Journal of Counseling Psychology. 54, 3.


Week 2: Theory-Building and Theory-Testing

Walker, Henry A. 2011. “Researching Race and Ethnicity: (Re)Thinking Experiments.” 
In Rethinking Race and Ethnicity in Research Methods. (chapter 7)  [ Download here ]

King, Gary, Robert O. Keohane, and Sidney Verba. 1994. Designing Social Inquiry: Scientific Inference in Qualitative Research. 
Princeton: Princeton University Press. Chapters 1, 3, 4 (pp. 128-149) [ Download here ]


Week 3: Content Analysis

BRING TO CLASS: Half-page single-spaced abstract of your research paper (email to Matt before class).

Guo, Lei and Summer Harlow. 2014. “User-Generated Racism: An Analysis of Stereotypes of African Americans, Latinos, and Asians in 
YouTube Videos.” Howard Journal of Communications. 25:3 (281-302).

Oliver, Mary Beth. 1994. “Portrayals of crime, race and aggression in ‘reality-based’ police shows: A content analysis.” Journal of 
Broadcasting and Electronic Media. 38:2 (179-192).

Lewis, Seth, Rodrigo Zamith and Alfred Hermida. 2013. “Content Analysis in an Era of Big Data: A Hybrid Approach to Computational and 
Manual Methods.” Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media. 57:1 (34-52).

For more see: 
Riffe, Lacy and Fico (2014). Analyzing Media Messages: Using Quantitative Content Analysis in Resarch. NY: Routledge.
van Dijk, Reun A. (2011) "Discourse Analysis of Racism." In Rethinking Race and Ethnicity in Research Methods. (chapter 3)

Steinert-Threlkeld, Zachary. 2018. Twitter as Data. Elements in Quantitative and Computational Methods for Social Science. 
Cambridge University Press.
 
Week 4: Survey research

Oskooii, Kassra AR. 2016. “How Discrimination Impacts Sociopolitical Behavior: A Multidimensional Perspective.” Political Psychology. 
37(5): 613-640. 

Tesler, Michael. 2012. “The spillover of racialization into health care: How President Obama polarized public opinion by racial 
attitudes and race” American Journal of Political Science. 56(3): 690-704. 

Garcia-Rios, Sergio, Francisco Pedraza and Bryan Wilcox-Archuleta. 2018. “Direct and Indirect Xenophobic Attacks: Unpacking Portfolios
of Identity.” Political Behavior. 


Week 5: Contextual data  
BRING TO CLASS: 2-page single-spaced overview of your research paper (email to Matt before class).

Enos, Ryan. 2015. “What demolition of public housing teaches us about the impact of racial threat on political behavior.” 
American Journal of Political Science. 60(1): 123-142. 

Timnit Gebrua, et. al. 2017. “Using deep learning and Google Street View to estimate the demographic makeup of neighborhoods 
across the United States.” PNAS Early Edition 

Anoll, Allison P. 2018. “What Makes a Good Neighbor? Race, Place, and Norms of Political Participation.” 
American Political Science Review 112(3): 494-508. 

Marschall, Melissa and Dietlind Stolle. 2004. “Race and the City: Neighborhood context and the development of generalized trust.” 
Political Behavior. 26(2): 125-153. 



Week 6: In-depth interviews

O'Brien, Eileen. 2011. "The Transformation of the Role of 'Race' in the Qualitative Interview: Not if Race Matters, But How?" 
In Rethinking Race and Ethnicity in Research Methods. (chapter 4)

Parker, Christopher. 2009. Fighting For Democracy. Princeton University Press. {Chapters 1, 2, 3, 4; but especially ch 3-4}

Waters, Mary C. 1994. "Ethnic and racial identities of second generation black immigrants in New York City." International Migration 
Review 28, no. 4: 795-820. {PDF of article}

Jiménez, Tomás R. 2008. “Mexican-Immigrant Replenishment and the Continuing Significance of Ethnicity and Race.” American Journal of 
Sociology 113(6): 1527-1567. 

Bonilla-Silva, Eduardo and Tyrone Forman. 2000. “‘I am not a racist but…’ Mapping White college students’ racial ideology in the USA.” 
Discourse and Society. 11(1): 50-85.


Week 7: Field experiments

BRING TO CLASS: 5-page single-spaced overview of your research paper (email to Matt before class).

Michelson, Melissa. 2002. Getting Out the Latino Vote: How Door-to-Door Canvassing Influences Voter Turnout in Rural Central California. 
Political Behavior. 25(3): 247-263. 

Wong, Janelle. 2005. “Mobilizing Asian American voters: A field experiment.” Annals of the Academy of Political and Social Science. 
601(1): 102-114.

de Rooij, Ellen A., and Donald P. Green. 2017. “Radio Public Service Announcements and Voter Participation Among Native Americans: 
Evidence from Two Field Experiments.” Political Behavior 39(2): 327-346. 

Butler, Daniel M., and David E. Broockman. 2011. “Do Politicians Racially Discriminate Against Constituents? A Field Experiment on 
State Legislators.” American Journal of Political Science 55(3): 463-477. 


Week 8: Survey experiments

White, Ismail, Chryl Laird, Troy Allen. 2014. “Selling out? The politics of navigating conflicts between racial group interest and 
self-interest” American Political Science Review. 108(4): 783-800.

Pérez, Efrén O., Maggie Deichert, and Andrew E. Engelhardt. 2019. “E Pluribus Unum? How Ethnic and National Identity Motivate 
Reactions to a Political Ideal.” The Journal of Politics.  81(4)

Masuoka, Natalie, and Jane Junn. 2008. “Asian American identity: Shared racial status and political context” Perspectives on 
Politics. 6(4): 729-740.

Hopkins, Daniel J. 2014. “The Upside of Accents: Language, Inter-Group Difference, and Attitudes Toward Immigration.” British Journal 
of Political Science 45(3): 531-557.  


Week 9: New innovations in REP research

Reny, Tyler and Benjamin Newman. 2021. "The Opinion Mobilizing Effect of Social Protest Against Police Violence: 
Evidence from the 2020 George Floyd Protests" The American Political Science Review

Collingwood, Loren, Nazita Lajevardi and Kassra Oskooii. 2018. “A Change of Heart? Why Individual-Level Public Opinion Shifted 
Against Trump’s ‘‘Muslim Ban’’” Political Behavior.

Oskooii, Kassra, Nazita Lajevardi and Loren Collingwood. 2019. “Opinion Shift and Stability: The Information Environment and 
Long‑Lasting Opposition to Trump’s Muslim Ban” Political Behavior.

Week 10: REP and Voter File research

Herron, Michael and Daniel Smith. 2014. “Race, party and the consequences of restricting early voting in Florida in the 2012 General 
Election.” Political Research Quarterly. 67(3): 646-665.

Imai, Kosuke and Kabir Khanna. 2017. "Improving Ecological Inference by Predicting Individual Ethnicity from Voter Registration Records" 
Political Analysis. 

Barreto, Matt, Michael Cohen, Loren Collingwood, Chad W. Dunn, and Sonni Waknin. 2022. "A Novel Method For Showing Racially 
Polarized Voting: Bayesian Improved Surname Geocoding." NYU Review of Law & Social Change.



Finals Week: In-class presentations


Grading Scheme:
Weekly research examples	20%
In-class participation		20%
Research presentation		30%
Final exam/paper		30%