If you’re interested in international development, you should be reading Chris Blattman’s blog. He is an assistant professor at Yale who blogs about poverty alleviation and public policy in developing nations. Some of his most interesting blogging is during summer months when he conducts field experiments all over the globe.

This recent post about micro-level empirical methods in politics (what he calls ‘micrometrics’) is excellent. He describes the progression of ways to do field work from innovators all the way to those who jump on the bandwagon, but get left behind. Being the first one in the field means no one knows what to look for.

Where there are big questions with almost no data, you can get away with just about anything.

Blattman also gives props to being a contrarian.

Where there are many assumptions but little theory or data, look for counterintuitive results and try to build a new theory. If you can overturn conventional beliefs, you are in.

You can’t blame anyone for not getting things perfect the first time through. But getting the methods right when doing research is essential. March and Lave’s costly book An Introduction to Methods in the Social Sciences is one of the most applicable things I have ever read for research in the social sciences. I can’t help but think that it would benefit those who do micrometrics.