Foundation Paper Assignment Sheet (Public Policy)
This paper requires you to do a number of different things. Overall, it is about laying out the foundation of your paper–conception, scholarly background, and methodology. Each of those things are their own independent section, but they all also build off of each other. Choices you make in the conception will affect how you research and lay out the scholarly background which will inform your choices about the methodology. Those later choices may (and probably will) go back and make you rethink earlier choices. All of that is normal and expected.
The paper will consist of several sections:
1. Conception: Lay out your research question, your provisional answer, a working hypothesis with independent and dependent variables specified. You should explain how these are on a public policy topic (broadly defined), empirical (not normative, descriptive, or predictive), looking at a causal relationship, generalizable to more than the example you choose to study, and worth studying (new and interesting). Explain, briefly, how you think the causal relationship actually works.
2. Schools of thought: Discuss how other scholars have already analyzed your topic. In particular, you want to analyze how other scholars have explained shifts in your dependent variable (i.e. the causes they have identified for the effect in which you are interested), organize them into groups that share similar explanations and evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of their arguments and evidence.
3. Methodology. Describe how you will measure your variables. Identify the population to which your model applies. Choose your strategy. Specify which members of the general group you will actually use for the study. Explain how your cases are comparable, what the alternative and threatening variables are, and how you will control for them, and why you think your results will apply to the general population.
Form: 2500-4000 words (spread fairly evenly between the three parts). Style according to the class style guide. Citations and bibliography.
Due: March 1 at 10 pm.
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