ABSTRACT
In our day-to-day life of watching and reading about political events we are bombarded with a whole range of facts, figures and points of view, and it is usually the case that we will believe, or accept, some information whilst choosing to question other claims. The focus of this text is an analysis of this process of information retrieval and assessment in our role as political researchers – that is, empirical political research. We are not inactive recipients of political information: we make some sort of choice about what newspaper we read, whether to watch the news, which books we read and, indeed, which courses we might study as part of our degree. Obviously, we are not totally ‘free’ to make these decisions, and most decisions we make are usually subject to some constraints – for example, whether we can afford to buy a newspaper every day; also, during your degree some courses will be compulsory whilst some will be optional.
