Training in Methodology
Public policy scholarship is heterogeneous. The research methods that produce it are heterodox. Often, or perhaps ideally, methods are combined. In propitious contrast, the public policy doctoral candidate's goals are few and orderly: selection of a policy problem for analysis, if not solution; proposal and refinement of a testable hypothesis; location or creation of evidence, followed by its formal evaluation; interpretation of findings; and, lastly, presentation of results in a way that solves, or at least reconceptualizes, the problem originally chosen for study and in a way that makes gratifying professional employment likely.
Public policy doctoral candidates attend two special seminars on methodology, PUAF 798R-1 and 798R-2.