PPOL 7350: APP Prep

Because students of Public Policy study vast interdisciplinary topics, they must use a wide variety of information sources: scholarly literature, practitioner literature, legal cases and regulations, community reports and data, and government documents.  This makes it fairly different from other disciplinary perspectives: an economist, historian, or physicist, for example, will rely heavily on information coming from within the discipline, whereas a student of policy must embrace many perspectives that coalesce on a given topic.  This is exciting and troublesome at the same time.  It's exciting to have such variety in your studies, but it is troublesome because it requires the student to do more to evaluate information.  Here are questions to ask yourself when you are evaluating new sources:

• Who produced this source? 
• Where was this source published?
• Who is the intended audience for this source?
• How long would it have taken the author to research and write this? 
• Why was this source written?  What is its purpose? 
• Would it be appropriate to include this source in your memo or project?

That last question is pretty subjective, and depends on your audience and the purpose of your paper.  How might you write and cite sources differently when you are writing for a client?  For the city council?  For a public policy professional association?

Before you can ask questions like who produced a source, you need to find it first.  This can be tricky when there are so many actors working on interdisciplinary topics.  One way to discover good information sources is to brainstorm groups that would be interested in a topic.  Stakeholders often produce useful information on a topic, although not always (e.g., citizens affected by policies).  Start brainstorming likely stakeholders, and be ready to discover documents or people that are important for your project.   Here are some suggestions for finding stakeholders, and their associated information resources.  

News Sources:

Check local and regional news sources for coverage of local events.  Access World News is a comprehensive news database that has an excellent set of local and regional newspapers for the United States and abroad.  Look for individuals or organizations mentioned in articles, or people who have written editorials or opinion pieces.  

For national/federal coverage, Factiva and Lexis Nexis news databases are your best choice.  You can find the Washington Post and New York Times in both of these news databases. 

Think Tanks, NGOs, Research Centers:

Think tanks interested in your topic will very likely have good reports that you can use.  They may also be able to connect you with other stakeholders and researchers interested in your topic.  Policy File Index and Harvard Think Tank Search are both good ways to find those think tanks. 

State Legislative Reports: 

Most state legislatures will provide reports for bills going up in the state legislature. A report can be either a legislative study (House or Senate Document) or a recurring report (Report Document).  Virginia's Reports to the General Assembly is an example of what a state might offer.  If you're interested in a different state, you might want to track down that state's legislative reports (feel free to reach out for help on this).  Look for individuals and organizations mentioned in the report on your topic of interest. 

City Reports:

Many cities will also offer reports, but these may be harder to find, since they might be more scattered across departments and not in one easy-to-find location.  Here is an example of City of Charlottesville Reports.  Again, be sure to scour the report for other interested parties and organizations that might be considered stakeholders. 

Federal coverage: 

There are lots of opportunities to discover stakeholders with sources that focus on the federal government.  CQ Researcher provides quick summaries on trending topics.  They are well researched and offer useful citations.  ProQuest Congressional is an excellent sources for Congressional materials in general, but they also offer Congressional Research Service (CRS) reports.  Again, these are well researched.  Their audience is Congress and they offer background information about topics that Congress might be considering.  Legislative Insight is a great tool for doing legislative histories.  If you know of a particular federal law related to your topic, it might be worth looking at Legislative Insight to see who introduced what bills and who and what organizations are mentioned in related reports. 

International Sources:

This is a very broad area, so I will only point to two resources: UN iLibrary and OECD iLibrary.  Both are good for discovering information that is international in scope.  If you have an international topic, you should consider looking for federal and local resources, much like the domestic sources listed above.  News coverage (also listed above) will be useful to you, as well.  

Non-Profits:

Search for non-profits by location and keyword using Guidestar. 

Businesses:

Search for businesses that might be interested in your area using ReferenceUSA or Mergent Intellect. 

University of Kansas Center for Community Health and Development. Chapter 7. Encouraging Involvement in Community Work - Section 8. Identifying and Analyzing Stakeholders and Their Interests. Community Tool Box. Retrieved August 1, 2018, from http://ctb.ku.edu/en/table-of-contents/participation/encouraging-involvement/identify-stakeholders/main.

The above website is a good overall review of stakeholder analysis and identification. It answers these questions:

• "What do we mean by stakeholders and their interests?
• Why identify and analyze stakeholders and their interests?
• Who are potential stakeholders?
• When should you identify stakeholders?
• How do you identify and analyze stakeholders and their interests?"

You have two deliverables this week:

Deliverable 1: Find two information sources related to your topic.  It can be anything: scholarly literature, practitioner literature, legal cases and regulations, community reports and data, and government documents. For each, answer these questions.  Write 1-3 sentences for each question, for each article. 

• Who produced this source? 
• Where was this source published?
• Who is the intended audience for this source?
• How long would it have taken the author to research and write this? 
• Why was this source written?  What is its purpose? 

Then, compare and contrast the context of these information sources in 2-5 sentences.  Do they share anything in common?  How are they different?  How might you use these sources differently depending on your audience?

Deliverable 2: Using the links above, discover one stakeholder that you did not already know about.  Write 1-3 sentences about who they are and what their relationship is to your policy area.  (It is okay if you haven't determined your specific topic yet.  The idea is to practice looking for stakeholders and/or reports that you didn't already know about.) 

Submit both as a single Word document to Collab. 

Due Date: November 9, 2018, at 11:59am.