Methodology Discussion: Please review and respond to your classmates’ posts?
As you now enter your 7th week, you are grappling with your Methodology section, working on a more refined hypothesis, and identifying variables. A sketch of your project, the dependent and independent variables, and what approach you are planning to analyze those variables is provided!
STUDENT’S POST
“Grappling with my methodology section” is a kind, but accurate way to put it. To use an analogy, if writing this paper is like walking from the shallow end of the pool to the deep end of the pool, the water just got to my nostrils, and I’m not really sure how to swim.
So this week, instead of rolling in like I have the right answer (or like I think it do, more likely), I’m just going to plain-English what I think I’m doing and stand by for a pool noodle. I don’t necessarily need rescuing yet, just a little help.
First off, I read “Chapter 7: How to Write Chapter 3, Methods,” and either I didn’t get it, or most of what Bui wrote isn’t very applicable to a qualitative analysis like I’m doing. Similarly, I’m not sure what I was supposed to take away from the Svendsen article. Sorry.
With that out of the way, here we go…
My research problem deals with space warfare. Why does it matter? Because unlike on the ground, where I can bulldoze the husk of a tank out of the way, or in the air or sea where a plane or ship will fall or sink to the ground or bottom, respectively, all of the debris from a space engagement just stays there, potentially crashing into other satellites indiscriminately – good guys, bad guys, manned, unmanned, whatever – practically forever. So it’s not really in the US’s best interest to go fighting in space (especially considering we own most of the stuff up there).
So the question that I’m trying to answer here is: What policies can the US adopt to decrease the likelihood of space warfare occurring? To answer the question, I started by doing some reading of what other people already wrote on the matter.
How much of a risk did other authors see from space warfare? What sort of policy proposals were other authors making? What sort of costs (reputation, monetary, credibility, security, resources, etc.) are associated with each of these policy proposals? What other issues are associated with space warfare, space operations, national security and space, etc.
Then, because I’m looking for policy options here, I grouped all of the proposals that I found into a spectrum of policies ranging from “as aggressive as it gets” on one end and “passive/cooperative as it gets on the other”, with the status quo policies in the middle.
And here’s where I add my two cents to the field – I noticed that the aggressive policy was much further from status quo than the passive/cooperative policy was. There’s an empty spot on the passive/cooperative policy end of the spectrum, so I’m going to fill it with my own proposal.
And then I’m going to test all of the policy options, including my own, using my chosen theoretical framework. In this case, I’m using offensive and defensive realism. So I did some research on those theories, found some articles using them, looked at the sources those articles used, read some of the sources, check on the source’s sources – etc., until I started seeing the same names come up over and over again and, in some cases, got to the guy who came up with the theory.
At this point I figure I’m at the heart of the intellectual crowd for this theory with these guys. What I’ll do is pick a small handful of articles that treat the theory. I don’t want a huge list of them like I had for my literature review – that was a wide-net survey. Here I’m picking just the credible, well cited individuals and using their version of the theory, plus maybe a critique or challenge by another credible individual. And I’ll apply the theory case by case to my policy options.
As an aside, I’m not doing a case study of other types of weapons per se, like I mentioned earlier in the course. However, I found a fairly similar argument regarding ballistic missile defense that I’ll use as an external example of how my theoretical test held up under slightly different circumstances.
So how do I apply my chosen theory to my chosen topic? I suppose by identifying dependent and independent variables.
Dependent variable – space war happens or it does not. This is the thing that I’m trying to figure out how to prevent, and all of the decisions that come prior to it are either independent or mediating variables that determine the outcome of this one.
Independent variable – US policy. It’s pretty much the thing that “we” have control over. As I mentioned in a forum response, we can’t write Russia or China or Iran’s space policy for them, and starting a war with them to prevent them from engaging in space warfare seems…counterproductive.
This is where things get murky. For example, domestic influences mediate policy (I know, realism treats states as the unit level and ignores internals…most of the time. Defensive realism looks at domestic considerations for what signals a state is sending on the international level regarding whether they’re greedy or aggressive or threatening or non-threatening, whether they should be balanced against or defended against…etc.) In any case, is domestic preference a mediating variable? It modifies existing policy, but it can also drive new policy.
Other considerations like all of the costs that I mentioned earlier can also have the same effect. Geographic influences, for example, also come into play. Geographic proximity, for example, can cause a state to feel the need to defend against a hostile neighbor. Well, in space, everyone is exactly the same distance away from each other, so that one seems like a clear case of a mediating variable.
Finally, I look at all of these independent and mediating variables and say, “Since offensive and defensive realism is all about what sort of signals a state is sending to another and what the expected response of that second state is going to be, which configuration should these variables be in to, a), keep our satellites from getting shot down, and b), maintain a minimum required threshold for national security.”
And then I win at thesis writing. ?
In conclusion, I apologize to everyone who has to read what might be rambling insanity (cue up the Billy Madison “may God have mercy on your soul” clip), but I felt like it was probably better to just say what I was thinking and look for feedback than try to fake my way through it.
Thanks for reading