This course will survey a diverse range of approaches and methods to conduct systematic political and social inquiry. It offers a basic set of tools social scientists use to answer the questions driving their work through the use of information (or “data,” whatever its kind) found in the real world. It will also offer training in ethical research. The course covers qualitative and quantitative approaches. Over the course of the semester, we will discuss the logic of causal inference (what it means to ask or answer “causal” questions), survey some of the main methodological approaches social scientists generally employ to establish causation, consider the nature of literature searches, as well as emphasize the rather restrictive assumptions that must hold for the resulting inferences to be minimally “valid.”