As we’ve progressed in the semester, we’re starting to hit some of the key dates where our Research Project has become the focus of our work. My group and I made a point to make sure we discussed a potential direction that we wanted to pursue with our research during class, and so far I think we’ve made taken some solid steps forward!
Initially, we considered trying to come up with a topic relating to cadet life, as that information would be more interesting and relevant to the average VMI student. However, the direction of our discussion took a more international route. We realized very early on that it’s actually quite difficult to come up with a viable, thoughtful research question. I found it exceedingly helpful to have a group to bounce ideas off of, and we were able to develop a few solid ideas to craft a question from. But not before having to go back to the drawing board a number of times; our issues were with trying to think of a question we could actually find data, as well as coming up with a question that was broad enough to create a more narrow hypothesis from.
Eventually, we settled with the following political science topic: “How long do countries experience the impact of colonization after gaining freedom?”
Some variables that we plan to research are the GDP of focus countries, their polity score, number and types of their institutions, and time since gaining independence. I don’t think that our list of variables is quite complete, as we’re moving towards developing our research method as well as understanding of what studies have been done about the subject of colonialism. The annotated bibliography should prove to be a help in figuring that out!
Upon further discussion with COL Sanborn, we’ve opted to wait to decide on what area of the world to focus on gathering data until we see how much research is out there. That way, we can decide which area (such as South America or Africa) would best exemplify the long term effects of colonialism. That way, we don’t run into the issue of having inconclusive evidence due to having a weak case study.
Our group is doing well so far coordinating through email and Slack. We’ve been able to divvy up the workload pretty evenly thus far, and we appear to be on track with the project. I’m excited to see where our studies take us, and perhaps our research could prove of some use to others later on down the road!
