Introduction: Practice makes perfect --The empirical approach to political science --Beginning the research process: Identifying a research topic, developing research questions, and reviewing the literature --The building blocks of social scientific research: Measurement --Research design: making causal inferences --Sampling --Making empirical observations: direct and indirect observation --Documentation analysis: using the written record --Survey research and interviewing --Making sense of data: first steps --Statistical inference --Investigating relationships between two variables --Multivariate analysis.