Designing Data Collection for Program Evaluation, Policy, & Management

Catalog description

Research is an important part of the policy process: it can inform the development of programs and policies so they are responsive to community needs, it can help us determine what the impacts of these programs and policies are, and it can help us better understand populations or social phenomena. This half-semester course serves as an introduction to how to ethically collect data for research projects, with an in-depth look at focus groups and surveys as data collection tools. We will also learn about issues related to measurement and sampling. Students will create their own focus group protocol and short survey instrument designed to answer a research question of interest to them.