POL8074 : Power and Policy: Understanding Impact
- Offered for Year: 2025/26
- Module Leader(s): Dr Rosario Aguilar
- Owning School: Geography, Politics & Sociology
- Teaching Location: Newcastle City Campus
Semesters
Your programme is made up of credits, the total differs on programme to programme.
| Semester 1 Credit Value: | 20 |
| ECTS Credits: | 10.0 |
| European Credit Transfer System | |
Aims
This module offers an engaging introduction to experimental methods, focusing on their application to political behaviour and public policy. The module will discuss the applications of experimental research to topics related to the use of social media during electoral campaigns, poverty alleviation, programmes to motivate people to receive jabs, etc.
Students will explore how experiments can reveal insights into why people make certain political choices, how opinions are formed, and the impact of policies on behaviour. The module provides a hands-on experimental approach to the study of policy and behavioural topics in politics.
The module emphasizes practical skills and real-world applications, showcasing how experimental methods are used in political research, policy evaluation, and beyond. Students will work through the semester on their own randomised control trial (RCT) to evaluate the feasibility of a policy project of their own choosing with the support of the module leader. By the end of the module, students will gain valuable analytical, critical thinking and project-evaluation skills highly sought after in today’s job market.
Outline Of Syllabus
1) Introduction
2) Cracking Causality: The Multiverse Approach
3) How to go about experimenting?
4) Randomization & Power: The Secret Sauces of Experiments
5) Ethics: the limits to research
6) Laboratory experiments & prejudice
7) Survey experiments & attitudes
8) Field experiments & policies
9) Lab-in-the-field experiments & policies
10) Multiple treatments, implementing & analysing
11) Discussion of projects
Teaching Methods
Teaching Activities
| Category | Activity | Number | Length | Student Hours | Comment |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Guided Independent Study | Assessment preparation and completion | 1 | 74:00 | 74:00 | N/A |
| Scheduled Learning And Teaching Activities | Lecture | 9 | 1:00 | 9:00 | PiP Lecture |
| Structured Guided Learning | Academic skills activities | 9 | 5:00 | 45:00 | Developing technical skills for their project |
| Scheduled Learning And Teaching Activities | Small group teaching | 9 | 1:00 | 9:00 | PiP Seminar |
| Structured Guided Learning | Structured research and reading activities | 10 | 6:00 | 60:00 | Preparation for seminars. 11 seminars (2-3 reading and 3-5 question for seminars) |
| Scheduled Learning And Teaching Activities | Drop-in/surgery | 1 | 3:00 | 3:00 | PiP assessment surgery |
| Total | 200:00 |
Jointly Taught With
| Code | Title |
|---|---|
| POL3135 | Power and Policy: Understanding Impact |
Teaching Rationale And Relationship
Lectures are essential to explain and discuss the experimental methods and their applications. In addition to the lecturer’s extensive knowledge and research into the subjects studied, the lectures rely on use of PowerPoint slides as well as multi-media to provide students with examples and help them understand the readings and topics.
The small discussion seminars will allow students to reinforce the knowledge acquired through the readings and lectures, as students will work on practical examples every week putting the knowledge into practice. Finally, the end-of-module assessment surgery will support students learning process and development of their own experimental design.
Assessment Methods
The format of resits will be determined by the Board of Examiners
Other Assessment
| Description | Semester | When Set | Percentage | Comment |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Prof skill assessmnt | 1 | M | 20 | Peer review of research plan - Students will evaluate each other’s research plan and provide constructive feedback. |
| Essay | 1 | M | 25 | 1000 word research plan with a discussion of the theory and methods included. |
| Research proposal | 1 | A | 55 | A 3,000 research proposal of a programme evaluation for a policy. |
Assessment Rationale And Relationship
1) The research plan will provide time and space for students to plan how to develop the type of policy they want to implement and evaluate for the final research proposal as well as the sources they will use to do so. I use this assessment to motivate students to engage with the final assessment from the beginning of the semester, meet with me to receive guidance and feedback. I also provide extensive feedback to the plans they submit.
3) Students will engage in peer-review of the plan in order to assimilate better the research proposal requirements and think about how to improve their own work while giving other students feedback. Students have given me positive feedback regarding this activity as they actively learn how to evaluate other's and their own work.
4) The research proposal will help students develop their written skills while improving their critical thinking and writing abilities building on from the research plan. The final outcome will be a clearly developed design to test a potential public policy designed to solve a societal issue, which is the type of document expected from an expert in policy evaluation.
As a whole, the tasks will enable students to end the module with a good understanding of concepts and practical applications of experimental methods. Moreover, having a variety of assessments speaks directly to the evidence that students have different areas of strength and that they can perform better on some of them. Thus, these assessments provide opportunities to compensate for weaknesses in some evaluative areas, while improving their critical, analytical and written abilities. Finally, I have received positive feedback from students who appreciate having the final mark broken down in different assessments.
Reading Lists
Timetable
- Timetable Website: www.ncl.ac.uk/timetable/
- POL8074's Timetable