Quantitative Research Methods for Policy Analysis

Course description

The role of quantitative analysis in public policy analysis and evaluation; quantitative research design; data collection and measurement; data description, descriptive statistics, measures of dispersion; probability, different quantitative techniques, introduction to statistical inference; hypothesis testing, null hypothesis, logic of testing, sample t-test; cross-tabulation, comparisons of group means, chi-squared statistics; correlation and its usefulness; regression, bivariate regression, assumptions of regression analysis; and empirical policy analysis

Syllabus

• download course syllabus (1/2019) here

Readings

Main textbook

• Quantitative Research Methods for Political Science, Public Policy and Public Administration: 3rd Edition With Applications in R
  by Hank C. Jenkins-Smith Joseph T. Ripberger Gary Copeland Matthew C. Nowlin Tyler Hughes Aaron L. Fister Wesley Wehde
  • Book website (open textbook library) link
  • PDF link

Suggested readings

• Angrist, D. and Pischke, J. (2008) Mostly Harmless Econometrics: An Empiricist’s Companion.
  • Link for free pdf
  • book website

Mostly Harmless Econometrics

Open Data

• Access World Bank Data with R link

Exploratory Data Analysis

• Tukey, John (1977) Exploratory data analysis. (Link )
• Peng, Roger. Exploratory Data Analysis with R (Link)
• Data Camp. Exploratory Data Analysis in R with Case (Link)
• Wickham, Hadley. Exploratory Data Analysis. R for Data Science (Link)

External Reading

• Party government and policy responsiveness. Evidence from three parliamentary democracies. Journal of Public Policy (paper, data)