Recommended Resources Cia Cal Poly Pomona Politi

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Recommended Resources Cia Cal Poly Pomona Politi

As part of “learning by doing” commitment of this class, you will be carrying out some basic research on four countries. Three of these countries are randomly assigned to you, and the fourth is the USA. Why the USA? Even if you are unfamiliar with some of the measures, having a point of comparison helps to make sense of what you’re finding. You can compare your lived experience to that of the data points. If you are not from the USA/grew up in another country, feel free to replace it with your home country and just note that in your write-up.

This assignment will progress over three weeks (Module 2-4) of the class. Each week you will add to the knowledge you’re finding.

Please cite all your sources. Use either MLA, APA, or Chicago style. https://libguides.library.cpp.edu/citationtutorials

Suggested data sources

  • https://libguides.library.cpp.edu/ibm3001 The CPP library has pulled together a nice set of guides for research. I would recommend scrolling to the “other recommended resources”
    • CIA world factbook – gives basic information about each country
    • CountryWatch – country profiles give a detailed understanding about key factors such as political trends, and recent news
    • GlobalEDGE – A research tool that allows you to compare across a variety of indicators
  • https://data.worldbank.org/ The World Bank has a downloadable database of indicators – more detail than most other sources.
  • There are many other reputable data sources out there – go ahead and explore!

MODULE 2: Political and economic factors

Economic data

  • Out of the different pieces of economic data discussed in our readings and videos, choose FOUR. One type of data must be GDP per capita (in USD).
  • For each of your countries, pull the data for those indicators for 5-10 years (a longer time horizon is better).

Take your data and plot it together in four different line graphs, one for each indicator. Example (not real data):

  • Write 2-3 paragraphs summarizing:
    • Why you chose the indicators you used? What do they mean, and why are they important?
    • Did your countries have data points for all ten years? Take an educated guess as to why/why not.
    • What were the trends you plotted?
    • What is your response to what you found? Were you surprised at anything?

Political data

  • Political data is sometimes (but not always) less quantitative than economic data. I would suggest going to CountryWatch and find their political risk index. For each country, note their political risk and then do some research to try to identify why the number is what it is.
  • Pick another indicator, such as political stability, or freedom rankings.
  • You can do this in a table, like this example:

  • Write 2-3 paragraphs summarizing:
    • Why you chose the indicators you used? What do they mean, and why are they important?
    • Did your countries have data points for all ten years? Take an educated guess as to why/why not.
    • What were the trends you plotted?
    • What is your response to what you found? Were you surprised at anything?

Political data

  • Political data is sometimes (but not always) less quantitative than economic data. I would suggest going to CountryWatch and find their political risk index. For each country, note their political risk and then do some research to try to identify why the number is what it is.
  • Pick another indicator, such as political stability, or freedom rankings.

You can do this in a table, like this example:


  • Write 1-2 paragraphs about what you found.
    • How do the countries compare?
    • Is there anything you found that surprised you?
    • Did the reasons you could find in the recent news seem to support the indicator values you found? Do you agree as to the risk level for the countries?
    • What other questions do you have about these countries, now that you have completed some initial research?

Submitting and review

  • Please make sure your assignment is properly formatted and that you use paragraphs and full sentences. Save it as a document or a PDF.
  • Upload the assessment in Blackboard as an attachment.
  • Once the evaluation period begins, log back into Blackboard, and click back into the same assessment.
  • You will be provided two peer assignments to review. There will be criteria and points with which to grade them by. Make sure you provide your fellow students with useful feedback.
  • Note that I choose a random subset of submissions and feedback to check for quality of submission as well as review.
  • Here’s a video that might help: