We've Come a Long Way, Baby: A Decade's Development of Methodology Textbooks

This article reflects Thomas Kuhn's observation concerning the function of textbooks in an academic discipline. Specifically, a decade's worth of textbooks available for methodology instruction are categorized and accessed. This analysis reveals some rather interesting results with respect to the progression of methodology instruction materials. The major conclusion is the virtual equation of methodology with inductivist procedures. While the paucity of textbooks available to present a deductivist mode of analysis has been remedied somewhat, the requisite mathematics materials with political science applications have not yet kept pace.