Political Science & International Studies Resources: Primary Research

This Power-Point presentation is designed to teach students techniques and etiquette for effective interviewing when conducting field research for their classes.

The University of Kansas provides this excellent overview of the interview process, including examples and a Power-Point presentation.

If you are conducting primary research using surveys or interviews, one of the most important things to focus on is creating good questions.

Primary research involves collecting data about a given subject directly from the real world. This section includes information on what primary research is, how to get started, ethics involved with primary research and different types of research you can do. It includes details about interviews, surveys, observations, and analysis.

The University of Kansas provides this excellent overview of the survey process, including examples and a Power-Point presentation.

If you are conducting primary research using surveys or interviews, one of the most important things to focus on is creating good questions.

ABAG is committed to enhancing the quality of life in the San Francisco Bay Area by leading the region in advocacy, collaboration, and excellence in planning, research, and member services.

The Miller Center is a nonpartisan affiliate of the University of Virginia that specializes in presidential scholarship, public policy, and political history and strives to apply the lessons of history to the nation’s most pressing contemporary governance challenges. Based at the University of Virginia, the Miller Center is committed to work grounded in rigorous scholarship and advanced through civil discourse.

The Voices of American Presidents have been captured by audio pioneers since the early days of sound recording. The invention of Edison's phonograph ushered in a new era of "recorded" history, beginning with President Benjamin Harrison in the late nineteenth century to the present day administration. The MSU Vincent Voice Library is working to preserve over 100 years of historical spoken word recordings like those of the U.S. Presidents, and is pleased to share these sound samples from its collection.

The Scripps Library and Multimedia Archive serves as a research facility for scholars of U.S. public policy. The Library's collection is a specialized one focused on American politics and history with special attention paid to the American presidency. The Library makes available a breadth of research material on the American presidency, both in print and digital form.

This resource discusses conducting research in a variety of archives. It also discusses a number of considerations and best practices for conducting archival research.

The OAC has more than 20,000 online collection guides. You can use these to browse, locate resources, or view selected items digitally — the OAC contains more than 220,000 digital images and documents — or learn how you can gain access to the physical objects. The OAC is a core component of UC's California Digital Library (CDL)

The Anne T. Kent California Room is an archive dedicated to collecting and preserving information on local, regional, and state history with a strong emphasis on the history and culture of Marin County. Resources include photographs, oral histories, biography files, maps, books, directories, voter registers, local newspaper clippings, documents and ephemera. We are currently in the process of digitizing our large collection of primary source materials.