I highly recommend students at UCLA who even thinking about doing research to take this course. While everything was online it felt similar to an in-person experience. The course was asynchronous for lectures but discussions were mandatory to attend. We were divided into groups at the beginning of the quarter and then you have to come up with a research topic pertaining to the field of racial and ethnic politics. Then you have to come up with a research proposal draft which you turn in and then you receive feedback and then come up with the final draft. It is a bit competitive because only one proposal gets selected for funding. Additionally, you are taught R programming in this course so you do not need any background in data analysis. Don't be off-put if the Professor does not upload the syllabus right away at the beginning because he is busy with a lot of other tasks but he is always willing to respond to emails or scheduled office hours if you need to meet. I really enjoyed this course and would recommend this to anyone interested in doing research. This course is unique as you are doing hands-on work rather than regurgitating concepts and expected to put it all in an essay. Also, shoutout to my TA Chase if he is a TA again you should take it with him because he is super helpful.

I really enjoyed this course and it was really great first-hand experience on conducting group research. In the first half of the course, you're working with your group to write a research proposal. Once the class votes on which proposal to use for their papers, the professor sends it to the IRB and they find people to take the survey. During the second half of the course, once the survey results come in, the professor and TAs taught everyone how to use R Studio (which can be difficult, but don't worry, the TAs are really helpful and smart!) so we could use that data for our group paper. Applying the data to our paper was really fun and we were able to draw a ton of conclusions from it since there was so much! Like any group project, there's a risk of being put into a bad group and having to do more work than others, but you get to grade your other group members at the end of the course and your feedback is factored into their grades so just make sure the assignments are done well and you'll do fine. Overall, I enjoyed this course and I definitely recommend it to anyone interested in research on racial and ethnic politics.