670 - foundation of public administration
Research Paper Project Guidelines
This project is an exercise in the social scientific study of public
... [Show More] administration, Students are expected to perform the following tasks:
1- Choose a substantive issue pertaining to the topic of the class. The choice may pertain to an empirical issue, or it may deal with normative topic. Do specific question about CORRUPTION
2- Examine a substantial portion of the social scientific or scholarly literature analyzing that issue.
3- Select one or more explanations or perspectives from that literature (or derive a new approach) for the chosen phenomenon.
4- Meet with the prof (or communicate by phone or e-mail) to discuss the project. This may be done at the start of the student’s research, if desired.
5- At some point students who are examining an empirical issue should be able to state, in hypothesis form, what observable implications can be drawn from their explanation(s).
6- Students should also be able to state the assumptions from which their hypothesis is derived.
7- Students dealing primarily with a normative issue need to be able to state a particular thesis and also the premises from which that thesis may be derived.
8- The prof will ask each student what literature he/she has read in researching his/her topic.
9- student is required to submit a written version of a paper proposal.
10- The written proposal should contain a stated hypothesis or thesis, the premises upon which the argument(s) is/are based, and a preliminary bibliography.
11- SUBMIT A BRIEF, WRITTEN PROGRESS REPORT ON THE RESEARCH PROJECT.
12-THE PROGRESS REPORT SHOULD CONTAIN AN OUTLINE OF THE PAPER, AN INTRODUCTORY SECTION AND LITERATURE REVIEW, AS WELL AS AN EXPANDED BIBLIOGRAPHY.
13- MAKE A VERY BRIEF (FIVE TO TEN MINUTE) PRESENTATION OF THE RESEARCH TO THE CLASS. Failure to do class presentation will cause a reduction in the research paper grade by one-third of a letter grade.
14- Write a paper, roughly nine to eleven pages long, evaluating the
explanation(s) or thesis as applied to the substantive topic.
15- Students should cite references using the format used by the American Psychological Association. At least ten of the sources cited in the bibliography and used in the paper should be from peer reviewed, scholarly journals.
16- Students should submit an electronic copy of their papers.
17- The electronic copy should be submitted to the Assignment function within Canvas. Late papers will be penalized.
18- The instructor will be happy to read and make comments upon rough drafts of student papers up to one week before the deadline.
19-The methodological approach used in the paper is pretty much up to the student.
In-depth case studies of single events,
comparative case studies of two or more events,
bibliographic essays comparing several explanations or perspectives in general terms,
qualitative examinations of trends over time or across different agencies or states, cities, etc.,
or statistical analyses of large numbers of cases are all permissible.
Students may find newspapers, magazines, government documents, and a variety of Internet sources helpful in doing the paper.
If so, they are encouraged to use them. Yet these sources are not generally adequate to provide an understanding of social science explanations.
For that reason,
students must rely upon some scholarly journals and/or books as sources.
Journals dealing generally with public administration, management, public policy, political economy, and law may be helpful.
These include Public Administration Review,
Administrative Science Quarterly, Administration and Society Journal of Human Resources, Academy of Management Journal, Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, Policy Studies Journal, the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, the Journal of Political Economy, and others.
General social science journals such as the American Political Science Review, the American Journal of Political Science, the American Sociological Review, and the American Economic Review may be helpful.
Magazines and web pages may be useful, but they should not be relied upon exclusively. [Show Less]