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Educating 21st century citizens requires lessons in data literacy, allowing learners to better understand and use the large amounts of information available to them. We must encourage our students to go beyond taking data as given, asking them to think critically about where it came from—Who collected it? For what purpose? What did they include/exclude? These questions dovetail with commonly taught topics in research methods courses, such as conceptualization, measurement, and operationalization, that may not be covered in substantive courses. This article describes a course module (of two to four 50-minute sessions) called "Codebook Critique," where students are asked to review and critically evaluate the codebook from a publicly-accessible dataset. While originally used in an upper-division International Relations course, the exercise is flexible in that the assignment can be split into its component parts as appropriate for course-level and applied in various subfields.

ABSTRACTThe importance of replication has been a major matter of discussion among political scientists for decades. However, in the past five years, the issue has gained greater traction, with many major journals adopting official standards for Data Access and Research Transparency (DA-RT). At the same time, scholars suggest the pivotal role that replication might play in methods training for students. Unfortunately, these conversations have been limited in that they emphasize quantitative methods and training of graduate students. This article seeks to fill this gap by offering commentary on the author's experience in introducing a qualitative replication project in an upper-division undergraduate course. The students in the course replicated Ross's (2004) influential article on the "resource curse," but the assignment framework can be adopted for various topics and contexts.

To develop our students' analytical capabilities and prepare them for the demands of the job market of the 21st century, it is imperative that Political Science faculty incorporate research and data literacy skills into a broader array of courses. Previous work on developing these skills has focused on introductory methods courses and capstone experiences, but this article suggests a scaffolded approach to incorporating accessible research experiences across the curriculum. The project provides a blue-print for the creating applied research courses and infusing existing courses with content and assignments that facilitate students' understanding of the research process and the use of analytic tools.

In Early Modern Europe, mercenary armies were the norm. With the rise of the state military, mercenaries seemingly disappeared, but private security has reemerged since the end of the Cold War. In many discussions of this phenomenon, privatization is seen as a policy choice undertaken by 'bad' leaders and as a sign of state failure. To evaluate these claims, however, requires a more objective investigation of the conditions under which leaders in weak states choose to privatize. This dissertation seeks to answer the following two questions: (1) under what conditions are states most likely to hire privatize military services, and (2) how can we predict which services will be privatized? I argue that dysfunctional civil-military relations, reliance on appropriable natural resources, and civil conflict all increase the likelihood that a regime leader will hire PMCs. I also argue that existential threats to the regime from the military (via dysfunctional civil-military relations) or rebels (via civil conflict) drive leaders to privatize at the tip of the spear. Evidence from original quantitative and qualitative data on security privatization in sub-Saharan Africa from 1990-2010 supports my theory.

Abstract
What are the causal pathways through which natural resources are linked to civil conflict? Ross evaluates ten causal pathways across thirteen conflicts to offer the most comprehensive answer to date. However, nearly 20 years later, all thirteen conflicts have ended, and more sources are available, motivating the question: Would the findings hold if replicated today? We employ a new explicit standards approach to replicate Ross' thirteen cases twice: First, using his original seventy-eight sources and second, employing a more up-to-date set of conflict end-dates and over 500 sources. Most findings (75 percent) hold, while 25 percent do not. We find stronger evidence for Ross' claim that looting resources is linked to longer conflicts and that resources motivate government repression. However, we also overturn some of his key claims, by demonstrating that resources do, in fact, affect conflict onset by funding rebel start-up costs and generating grievances amongst the population.