Research Question: Role of the Pressure groups in politics in shaping public policy in the European Parliament. Write a proposing a testable hypothesis for your final research study. Hypothesize a relationship between an independent variable and a dependent variable. State the control variables you intend to introduce in your model and describe why you believe these controls belong in the model. Insure that you have developed good conceptual definitions for each of the variables you plan to use and describe how you will achieve validity and reliability. Finally, assess the level of measurement you believe you will be able to achieve for each of the variables. Research Question Relevance One possible area that I am interested to do my research on is to compare and contrast interest groups from different European countries [Greece, Germany,Spain and France] regarding their respective operational styles and influence in the European Parliament. My thesis explores how the distribution of costs and benefits of legislative proposals influence interest groups probability of securing wins in certain conflicts taking place in the European Parliament. It will be helpful to explain some reasons for the selection for four European states (Greece, Spain, Germany, and France)-Political,Social and Economic and culture. Target Audience The research project make informative suggestions for ordinary citizens (voters) and also the research project designed to educate students (of European countries and the U.S.). Alternatively, the research project going to make some policy-relevant recommendations for policy-makers? Ethical Standards What are some of the major ethical challenges for data collection in this project? For example, some pressure groups may not want certain information about their activities to be disclosed to the general public. What are some challenges for a researcher to obtain and handle some sensitive information? Reference: For more information regarding different types of research and ethics in political research, please see W. Phillips Shively, The Craft of Political Research, 8th edition (New York: Pearson, 2011).Reference: Rasmussen, Maja, The influence of interest groups in the European parliament, http://etheses.lse.ac.uk/698/1/Rasmussen_Influence_interest_groups.pdf http://www.laits.utexas.edu/txp_media/html/ig/print_ig.html
