The School of Politics and Global Studies has launched a fully online political analytics concentration within the Master of Arts degree in political science this semester.
The concentration requires 30 credit hours across 10 classes and offers flexible enrollment. It was created for graduate students to understand the key elements of identifying and analyzing objective political information.
Günes Murat Tezcür, director of SPGS and a professor, said there are three entry points for the program that allow students to start in the fall, spring or summer.
The program provides "rigor in terms of studying political data" and real-life practice, Tezcür said.
Political data can be obtained through any channel, such as election results, social media analytics, surveys or government bodies, Tezcür said. The concentration enables students to use multiple quantitative tools when evaluating the data.
"It's a unique combination in terms of how we try to develop this program," Tezcür said.
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Sean Geraghty is a second-year graduate student studying public policy. He has interned for a private consulting firm and Valley Metro, as well as conducting research for ASU's Morrison Institute for Public Policy reporting on key economic trends in the Arizona housing market.
"I chose public policy because I want to make real impacts with real data on policy and evaluating whether or not it works," Geraghty said. "A lot of what public policy is is doing evaluation using data to analyze whether a policy is correct using metrics, not theory as much."
He said a public policy degree is more applicable and in demand for jobs than a political science degree.
"I think it's weird that they're doing that," Geraghty said. "I would be interested to look more into it to see what the course setup is compared to mine."
Kenicia Wright, a professor in SPGS, said the concentration teaches students to communicate fact-based assessments for politics.
Wright currently teaches one of the foundational requirement courses for the concentration, Empirical Political Inquiry.
Within the class, students can choose the type of data most relevant for the argument they're interested in testing and learn the relevant critical thinking skills needed for their research, Wright said.
Wright said the course can be taken by master's and doctoral students. She said master's students tend to focus on already collected data, while doctoral students typically collect their own data.
She said she emphasizes the research process students go through when developing arguments in her course to help students be aware of potential limitations, biases or shortcomings in other studies to avoid making mistakes in their own research.
"Even with the highest standards of research methods, the steps for completing ethical and objective research, we generally know bias tends to influence some of the research process, even with those safeguards in place," Wright said.
Students can also choose from a variety of professional paths and academic concentrations with the skills learned in the program. There is a wide range of applicability for this concentration, and students from many different backgrounds can use what they learn in the classes, Wright said.
In her course, students are focusing on topics such as the education attainment of Latinos in the U.S. and feminist or anti-feminist identities. She also sees students researching the economic effects of citizenship.
AI is also increasingly involved in all aspects of education, Wright said, and the concentration works to be aware of and address the strengths and limitations of AI use.
"Ultimately, the program really gives you ... a sophisticated, informed use of AI in terms of analyzing data," Tezcür said.
AI can learn how to run models and estimate statistical analysis, Tezcür said, although you need to have the background to understand it for it to be an effective tool in analyzing political data.
"Data is everywhere, maybe more than ever," Tezcür said. "Just from social media you can get the millions of different pieces of information, but obviously the challenge for us is really how to analyze it, how to make sense of it."
Edited by Andi Ruiz, Carsten Oyer and Sophia Keeling.
Reach the reporter at swang496@asu.edu.
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Quinn is currently a first-year Barrett student studying Business Data Analytics & Supply Chain Management with a minor in fashion. She is the Professional Development Intern for ASU's DECA Chapter and a part of Phi Alpha Delta in addition to being a politics reporter at the State Press.
