OAS4200 Political Processes and Policy Instruments Course description

All courses included in the specialisation must be completed with pass grades and all coursework requirements must be approved before the candidate may submit the master’s thesis.

On successful completion of the course, the student has the following learning outcomes classified as knowledge, skills and competence:

Knowledge

The student can

• analyze and critically assess the scientific work of others

Skills

The student can

• demonstrate working knowledge of the ethical and technical principles that govern scientific research and publication, including international citation and reference standards
• demonstrate that they can conduct a supervised research project in accordance with research ethics guidelines and regulations, and guidelines from relevant governmental bodies (i.e. The Norwegian Data Protection Authority, relevant Norwegian Research Ethics Committees and so on)
• choose and apply relevant methods of data collection for research or scientific inquiry
• write a thesis according to criteria determined by the university
• critically assess the results of his own work
• critically assess various sources of information

Competence

The student can

• participate in the development of the behavioral sciences
• justify their professional behavior with reference to ethical guidelines, general ethical considerations and their own assessment of the situation
• analyze and critically assess various sources of information with relevance for the thesis

On successful completion of the course, the student has the following learning outcomes classified as knowledge and skills:

Knowledge

The student can

• describe and discuss societal influences that support a complexity perspective
• describe and discuss complexity as a scientific approach
• describe and discuss dualism as a philosophical perspective, and the problems with dualism in applied settings
• describe concepts from complexity science such as reductionism; emergence; critical mass; consilience, and the unity of science
• give examples of analyses of the same phenomenon at different levels of reduction
• describe and discuss differences in antagonistic and complementary professional approaches to the same phenomenon
• describe and discuss the principle of selection at different levels of complexity

Skills

The student can

• analyze networks as the structure of complex adaptive systems
• identify nodes and hubs, assessing the robustness and vulnerability of Networks
• identify category mistakes and discuss mentalism and evolutionary approaches
• cite sources and arrange a reference list according to the current standard from APA
• use a digital reference manager for citations and references in written assignments

The following required coursework must be approved before the student can take the exam:

a.; ;Research ethics seminar 1 and 2 must be fully attended;

b.;; Approved thesis outline

c.; ;A signed contract with the appointed supervisor

Thesis. Submission of master’s thesis according to program specifications, consisting of 1 scientific article. Technical standards according to the current APA manual. Submitting dates each year: June 15th ;and November 15th.

Thesis format

The 30 ECTS Master’s thesis for BSCA consists of one article written in accordance with the author guidelines specified in the current APA Publication Manual. The length should be appropriate for the work that is reported, but should commonly not exceed 40 pages, including the title page, references, talbes, and figures, but excluding appendices.

Ethics and data protection

An account of ethical considerations is required if the thesis includes empirical data on humans or nonhuman animals. A risk -and vulnerability analysis (ROS-vurdering) should normally be conducted, and a case number should be included in the title page of the thesis article. If data on humans are included in the thesis, an account of data protection issues is typically required. The description of ethical and data protection considerations can be;included in the main body of the thesis. If the decision is made that such an account is not appropriate in the main body of the thesis, a reflection note on this topic should be attached to the thesis. A reflection note is a short description of ethical and data protection considerations, maximum 6000 characters, including spaces. For theses that do not include empirical data, research ethics relevant to the thesis should be discussed, either in the main body of the text or a reflection note.;

Some Master projects may require consideration or approval from external bodies, such as Norwegian Centre for Research Data (NSD), the Regional Committee for Medicine and Health Sciences Research Ethics (REK), National Committee for Research Ethics in the Social Sciences and the Humanities (NESH), and/or internal or external data protection officials. It is ultimately the responsibility of the main supervisor to ensure that the relevant bodies are consulted. If external bodies are consulted, a case number should be included in the title page of the thesis article. If a decision is made that there is no need to consult external bodies regarding ethics or data protection, a description of the deliberations preceding this decision is required, either in the main body of the thesis or in the reflection note. If the thesis is an empirical work, the main supervisor must state in writing that the research is conducted in accordance with current laws and regulations before the thesis can be submitted.

All

Individual home examination, 5 hours. Exam questions are in English. Students may submit their exams in Norwegian, Swedish, Danish or English.

One internal and one external examiner will assess all exams.

Grade scale A-F