Please complete the research Proposal portion. Review the following material in order to understand how to complete the research proposal.

Overview

The Directed Studies course is your opportunity to conduct basic or applied policy research. As a practical matter, you should consider this course to be part of a two-course sequence (with either PPA 696 or PPA 670 being the first part) which provides an opportunity for students to engage in the process of social scientific inquiry with respect to vital public policy and public management issues.

While the student is not expected to achieve expertise in scholarly research in this course, students should at a minimum show that they are intelligent consumers of policy research. What this means is that students should understand:

· The conceptual foundations and ethical issues associated with policy research,

· The general design and structure of research used in public policy and the fundamental purpose(s) of such approaches,

· Data collection methods and how they complement the research approach,

· The essential methods of data analysis, their proper application, and interpretation, and

· How to effectively present research findings to a variety of audiences and through different mediums.

Methods Of Applied Policy/Management Research

In order to conduct applied policy research one must identify the type of research problem/question that is present and then select the appropriate approach.

Below is a table that should help you to decide what approach is best given the research problem/question. Keep in mind that in most applied policy research projects that there is usually more than one problem/question; thus, requiring multiple methods.

So you will need to think about your topic in terms of the nature of the research problems that it involves rather than the single category of problem that you might try to fit it into.

Very few research topics that are worth investigating in depth can be fit into only one problem category.