CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY, SACRAMENTO

PPA 205:
Research in Public Policy and Administration

Fall, 2000
Professor Ted Lascher
3035 Tahoe (Business)
(916)278-4864 (office)
(530)758-5687 (home--
    no calls after 8:00 p.m.)
tedl@csus.edu
liznted@juno.com

Class Meeting time and place:
Thursday, 6-8:50 p.m., Mendocino 4005

Class office hours: Thursday 5-6 p.m. and
    by appointment

I hear, and I forget;
I see, and I remember;
I do and I understand.
Chinese Proverb

OVERVIEW

This course focuses on the design of social science research. The main goal is to enhance students' understanding of how to fashion studies to draw valid inferences. Additionally, PPA 205 aims to promote knowledge of the characteristics and potential pitfalls of various data gathering approaches. As well, PPA 205 is intended to facilitate appropriate choice of quantitative analysis techniques, effective presentation of study results, and ethical conduct of research projects.

While PPA 205 concentrates especially on applications in public policy and politics, it draws from other social science disciplines as well. For example, we will consider the implications of the controversy about the consequences of "low self-esteem" in psychology.

This is not primarily a course on statistical analysis of quantitative information. Another course, PPA 207, serves that purpose. The discussion of statistical techniques in PPA 205 is aimed mainly at enhancing understanding of methods not discussed in depth in the other course, especially those appropriate for analyzing categorical data (e.g., religion). We will focus especially on cross-tabulation and its relationship to regression analysis. We will also consider the practical reasons for choosing one technique or another.

 

CONDUCT OF THE COURSE

This course differs from traditional research methods courses in that a relatively heavy emphasis is placed on classroom discussion. I believe it is not enough for students to listen carefully to a lecture; instead, the concepts must be used to analyze real world studies and information. Accordingly, a typical class will begin with assessment of an applied reading or some other means of putting course ideas to work. In the latter part of the class I will draw lessons and further elaborate upon important points from the readings. Discussion questions are also included in the syllabus to help guide your reading.

Especially because of the emphasis on discussion, it is essential that students come to class having done the week's reading. Students should also be prepared to accept special discussion related assignments, such as leading the analysis of a particular study.

 

READINGS

Required course readings include a course packet containing articles and book chapters, as well as the following books.

Richard L. Cole, Introduction to Political Science and Policy Research (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1996).

Jean M. Converse and Stanley Presser, Survey Questions: Handcrafting the Standardized Questionnaire, Sage University Paper series on Quantitative Applications in the Social Sciences, 07-063 (Beverly Hills: Sage Publications, 1986).

James A. Davis, The Logic of Causal Order, Sage University Paper series on Quantitative Applications in the Social Sciences, 07-055 (Beverly Hills: Sage Publications, 1985).

Gary King, Robert O. Keohane and Sidney Verba, Designing Social Inquiry: Scientific Inference in Qualitative Research (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994).

Mark S. Litwin, How to Measure Survey Reliability and Validity (Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, 1995)

All readings are available from the Hornet Bookstore.

 

STATISTICAL PACKAGE

In addition to the readings, people are expected to purchase a student’s version of the statistical program "SPSS for Windows," available in the Hornet Bookstore. We will be using this program at different stages in the course, including for the group project and at least one examination. Additionally, students will use SPSS extensively in PPA 207.

 

EXAMINATIONS

There will be a mid-term examination and a final examination. The mid-term is scheduled for October 12; the date of the final exam will be forthcoming. Both will be taken in the classroom and will be "open book, open note" exams, meaning that you are welcome (indeed, encouraged) to bring to class any course materials you think may be helpful.

 

ASSIGNMENTS

There will be a short (1,000 word) individual paper on the logic of causal order; detailed guidelines will be provided. Additionally, toward the end of the semester there will be a group assignment requiring a class presentation and preparation of a two page (i.e., "short and sweet") memo.

Additionally, there will be three one page homework assignments. Unlike the case for other assignments, only three homework grades will be used. A homework assignment that answers the questions adequately will receive an "A" grade, one with minor errors will receive a "B" grade, while one with significant flaws will receive a "C" grade.

 

LATE ASSIGNMENTS AND MISSED CLASSES

Late assignments will not be accepted. At my discretion, a student who misses a deadline may be given a make-up assignment. Whether or not a penalty will be assessed depends on the reason (e.g., a family emergency constitutes a good reason; a competing requirement for another course does not).

A student with more than one unexcused absence from class will be penalized one full class participation grade. A student who misses more than three classes for any reason should drop the course.

GRADING WEIGHTS

Grading will be determined as follows:

Final exam
Mid-term exam
Individual paper
Group assignment
Class participation
Homework

   25%
20%
15%
20%
10%
10%

DETAILED CLASS INFORMATION

Note: In general, applied readings are listed first.

I. DESIGNING SOCIAL INQUIRY

 
 

A. INTRODUCTION

August 31

Readings

Cristina Hoff Sommers, "The War Against Boys," The Atlantic Monthly 285 (May 2000), pp. 59-74

Dean Baker and Mark Weisbrot, Social Security: The Phony Crisis (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1999), pp. 54-60

Cole, Introduction to Political Science and Policy Research, ch. 1

King, Keohane and Verba, Designing Social Inquiry, pp. 1-13

Discussion Questions

  1. What’s wrong with the popular argument about how girls are disadvantaged in K-12 education?

  2. What’s wrong with the popular argument that the growing population of elderly in the U.S. is a "ticking time bomb" for Medicare?

  3. What are the key characteristics of social science research?

  4. What is the difference between normative and empirical research?

B. THEORIES, HYPOTHESES, AND VARIABLES

September 7

Homework Assignment #1 Due

Readings

Baumeister, Roy, Laura Smart and Joseph Boden, "Relation of Threatened Egotism to Violence and Aggression: The Dark Side of High Self-Esteem," Psychological Review, 103 (1996), pp. 5-8, 12, 15-20, 26-29

Cole, Introduction to Political Science and Policy Research, ch. 3

King, Keohane and Verba, Designing Social Inquiry, pp. 14-33, 99-114

Recommended Films

"American History X"; and "Boyz N the Hood"

Discussion Questions

  1. What does it mean to have a falsifiable theory?

  2. Is the theory about the connection between self-esteem and violence falsifiable?

  3. What is the difference between an experimental and non-experimental research design?

C. THINKING ABOUT CAUSALITY

September 14

Readings

Kevin B. Smith and Jeremy Eccles, "Buying a Better SAT Score: A Renewed Search for the Elusive Link between Education Expenditures and Outcomes," State and Local Government Review, 30 (1998), pp. 42-51

Davis, The Logic of Causal Order (entire)

Discussion Questions

  1. What is the conventional causal model with respect to how teacher salary influences student performance? How does the model advanced by Smith and Eccles differ?

  2. How can researchers determine the correct causal order for the variables they are examining?

D. MEASUREMENT, RELIABILITY, AND VALIDITY

September 21

Paper Due

Readings

Cole, Introduction to Political Science and Policy Research, ch. 6

Litwin, How to Measure Survey Reliability and Validity, pp. 1-45

Discussion Questions

  1. How can you tell if you have a good measure of some underlying concept?

  2. What is the difference between validity and reliability?

E. A PROGRAM FOR ENTERING AND ANALYZING SOCIAL SCIENCE DATA: SPSS

September 28

Note

Most of this class will be devoted to an overview of how to use SPSS to enter, code, and analyze data. Those who are unfamiliar or uncomfortable with SPSS may want to "play" with the program ahead of class, drawing on the practically oriented guide by Shaffer et al., which will be on two hour reserve at the library (the Shaffer book was written for SPSS version 9.0, but there have been only small changes to the program since then).

Readings

Bruce E. Keith, et al., The Myth of the Independent Voter (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), pp. 1-5, 9-22

Litwin, How to Measure Survey Reliability and Validity, pp. 47-58

Recommended: Richard A. Shaffer, et. al., SPSS for Windows Version 9.0: A Basic Tutorial (New York: McGraw Hill, 1999)

Discussion Questions

  1. What difference does it make whether "leaners" are coded as Democrats/ Republicans or independents? Why

  2. How should one approach coding decisions?

II. DATA COLLECTION

 

 

A. FINDING AND USING ARCHIVAL DATA

October 5

Web Sites to Visit

Come to class having perused the Web sites for the Social Science Data Base Archive (SSDBA) at CSU Los Angeles (http://artemis.calstatela.edu) and the Inter-University Consortium on Political and Social Research (ICPSR) at the University of Michigan (http://www.icpsr.umich.edu).

Readings

Ted Lascher, "The Moderately Skilled Layperson's Guide to Using the CSU System's Social Science Databases," typescript, 1998

Cole, Introduction to Political Science and Policy Research, ch. 5

Discussion Questions

  1. What kind of social science data sets are widely available to people within the academic community? To what extent are such data sets available to members of the CSUS community?

  2. How would you go about finding and obtaining a relevant social science data set?

October 12

Mid-Term Examination

Note

The class time remaining after the exam will be devoted to preparation for the group assignment due on November 30.

C. CONDUCTING SURVEYS: THE BASICS

October 19

Readings

Converse and Presser, Survey Questions, pp. 9-31

Richard Seltzer, Mistakes that Social Scientists Make (1996), pp. 90-100

William S. Robinson, "Ecological Correlations and the Behavior of Individuals," American Sociological Review, 15 (1950), 351-357

Discussion Questions

  1. What common problems face people who construct surveys? What can "go wrong?"

  2. How can surveys be made conceptually clear?

  3. What problems can arise from using aggregate instead of survey data?

D. ASSESSING SURVEY DESIGN

October 26

Homework Assignment #2 Due

Reading

Converse and Presser, Survey Questions, pp. 31-end

Litwin, How to Measure Survey Reliability and Validity, pp. 59-71

Discussion

Come to class prepared to discuss your homework assignment.

E. CASE STUDIES

November 2

Film

To be viewed before class: "All the President’s Men"

Readings

Edward L. Lascher, Jr., "Loss Imposition and Institutional Characteristics: Learning from Automobile Insurance Reform in North America," Canadian Journal of Political Science, 30 (1998), pp. 143-164

King, Keohane and Verba, Designing Social Inquiry, chs. 4, 6

Discussion Questions

  1. What hypotheses do Woodward and Bernstein draw about corruption in the U.S. government? To what extent did their hypotheses change over time? What types of evidence did they use? How did they attempt to confirm their inferences?

  2. In attempting to determine the influence of governmental systems, why is it appropriate to focus on American states and Canadian provinces?

  3. What is selection bias? How should the researcher address potential selection bias?

  4. How does one "maximize leverage" (a la King, Keohane and Verba)?

III. DATA ANALYSIS

 

 

A. DATA ANALYSIS: THE BASICS

November 9

Homework Assignment #3 due

Reading

Cole, Introduction to Political Science and Policy Research, chs. 8-9

Discussion Questions

  1. What is the difference between statistical significance and the strength of a relationship?

  2. How do the chi-square, Cramer’s V, and Lambda statistics differ?

B. DATA ANALYSIS: MULTIPLE VARIABLES AND THE LOGIC OF ELABORATION

November 16

Readings

David Reynen, "Risk Factors for Not Having Healthcare Coverage," CSUS MPPA thesis, 1999, selection

Cole, ch. 10

Discussion Questions

  1. What is the difference between a spurious effect and an intervening effect?

  2. What techniques can be used to control for the effects of different independent variables on a dependent variable?

  3. What is the logic of elaboration?

IV. PRESENTING RESULTS/ETHICS OF SOCIAL SCIENCE RESEARCH

 
 

A. PRESENTING RESULTS

November 30 (no class November 23- Thanksgiving)

Group Memo Due; Group Presentations in Class

Readings

Robert Putnam, "The Strange Disappearance of Civic America," The American Prospect (Winter 1996), pp. 34-48

Cole, Introduction to Political Science and Policy Research, ch. 11

Discussion Question

What are the characteristics of an effective presentation using social science data?

B. ETHICAL ISSUES/COURSE WRAP-UP

December 7

Reading

Eyal Press and Jennifer Washburn, "The Kept University," The Atlantic Monthly 285 (March 2000), pp. 39-54

Discussion Questions

  1. What are researchers' ethical obligations to their discipline and colleagues?

  2. To what extent do commercial ties between academics and businesses create ethical problems for the conduct of research?

BACK