steps

Implementation

- Moore’s strategic triangle and its elements
It is a great tool to be used by the public managers when thinking of coming up with new policies that matters to the public, failure to meet the three elements of the strategic triangle will make the success of the policy very difficult and maybe impossible.
Example to apply the strategic triangle: SAFER AIR Act of 2010
Sen. Robert Bennett proposed and wrote this Act that involves the Department of Homeland Security (HSD) to ensure advanced imaging devices installed at the airports and metro stations to scan passengers before they get to the airplane or the train and to inspect them for any possible chance to carry explosive weapons. So the main goal is the security and safety of the public.

1. 1-  The first element of the strategic triangle is the Public Value, looking to the reason and proposes of this act we will find it is really concerned about the public safety, but on the other hand people did not like such advanced technology that could provide very clear image for the human body naked. This is considered to be violation to the privacy right even though the goal behind is to save people lives. This led to a conflict between two public values. This Act died at the end and was sent back for committee.

2. 2-  The Authorizing Environment. SAFER AIR Act didn’t have a good political support and that is another reason for it to die at an early stage as the Congress sent it back for a committee with a list of comments saying No.

3. 3-  The Operational Capability or Sustainability, from what I have seen from this Act I think it is doable but it will cost a lot of money to come up advanced devices and technology that could do what it should do to scan the passengers and also at the same time ensure high level of privacy and ensure the images taken by these devices are not transferred or accessed by anyone other than the person operating the scanning device.

    

   2-
   Research and Methods :We will examine the following and you will write up the answer as an Question #5 for this course:
   The Flint Water System was found to be toxic so the main water source reverted to the Detroit system, not the Flint River.  After the switch, the water needed to be retested.  Read the following and determine:
   What is the research question?
   What are the variables?
   What is the research design?
   What was the sampling process?
   How was the data collected?
   How was the data analyzed?
   Why or why not was this effective? What did the results show?
   

   Research and Methods Outline

    

   What is Research?

   ●      Evidence-based Argumentation: Make predictions based on evidence, as opposed to assumptions

   ●      Induction: Learning from the world by observations

   Why?

   ●      Tools to conduct good research

   ●      Evaluate

   ●      Give opinions

   Scientific research is a strategy for generating reliable knowledge to address problems

   ●      In our case, the problems faced by public managers

   ●      “The best decision made by public sector managers are based not on instinct, but on an informed understanding of what’s happening on the ground” (Eller, Gerber, Robinson, 2013)

    

   Toulmin Argument in Public Administration

   ●      Claim: the statement you seek to evaluate

   ○      Specific, falsifiable, relevant

   ●      Reason/ evidence:

   ○      The reason why we do research

   ●      Warrant:

   ○      How the evidence or reason is sufficient enough to provide confidence     in claim

   Descriptive Research: Who? What? When? How many?

   ●      Example: Is the water safe to drink in Flint, Michigan? 

   Explanatory Research: Why? How?

   ●      Example: Why does Flint river water have high levels of lead?

   Causation & Correlation:

   Correlation does not imply causation

   Causal inference: X causes Y

   Correlation: There is a pattern

    

   Understand the initial tasks of research and evaluation

   3 stages of research:

   ●      Formulating Research Question and Hypothesis

   ●      Collecting Relevant Data

   ●      Analyzing Data

   Writing a literature review

   Purpose:

               Substantive introduction

               Explanation of importance

               Context-setting

    

   Creating an annotated bibliography: A comprehensive listing of major research articles, reports, books, and other similar sources of information about a specific topic

    

   Understand the techniques used in obtaining general background information:

   ●      Conducting preliminary interviews with key informants or subject matter experts

   ●      Identify and understand basic concepts of types of data gathering techniques

    

   Conducting Background Interviews with Subject Matter Experts (SMEs):

   Persons with specialized knowledge, expertise, and experience within a particular policy domain or program area

    

   The Value of SME Interviews:

   Identify core policy issues and challenges

   Identify core research challenges

   Assess critical questions

   Data Gathering-

               Field Research

               Surveys

               Existing Data Sets  

               Creating and Original Data Set

    

   Research Design

   ●      Basic challenge

   ○      Develop an understanding of exactly how to approach the data collection process when attempting to evaluate or assess some program or policy

   ●      Research design

   ○      Refers to the general process by which data gathering efforts are structured and defined; that is, what is to be studied and how, what variables are to be included in the study, how they are measured in relation to one another, and how those data are gathered

   Basic Concepts for Research Design

   ●      Experiment: An activity where a researcher controls or manipulates the conditions under which some sort of subject is examined in order to observe and measure a specific cause-and-effect relationship

   ●      Treatment: A variable or condition that the researcher introduces into the experiment in order to see whether it has an effect on the subjects

   ●      Control group: Those subjects in the experiment that do not receive the treatment

   Ethics and Research Design

   ●      Issues of potential bias and conflicts of interest in the conduct of a research or evaluation study is of paramount concern

   ●      Issues of subject selection and subject inclusion

   Ethics and the Research Process

   It is critical to understand the importance of protecting the rights of other persons in any project that involves gathering any type of data a from other persons.

               Example: Tuskegee Syphilis Study (withholding treatment from subjects)

   Protections:

   ●      Institutional Review Boards (IRB) for University Research

   ●      Federal Guidelines for biomedical research

    

   Measurement:

   Understanding the Basics of Measurement

   ●      Operationalization- Translating a concept of interest into a form that can be measured

   ●      Understanding what to study and what to measure

   Variables

   Qualitative vs. Quantitative Methods

   ●      Qualitative- goal is to examine, understand, and describe a phenomenon

   ○      There are non-numerical differences between categories (usually designated by words or labels -i.e. Gender) Values consist of numbers, and differences between values can be expressed in numbers

   ●      Quantitative- goal is to analyze and represent the relationship        mathematically through statistical analysis

   ○      Values consist of numbers, and differences between values can be expressed in numbers

   Dependent vs. Independent variables

   ●      Dependent- what is being tested and observed

   ●      Independent- not change by other variables, stand-alone

    

   Levels of Measurement

   ●      Nominal Variables: Names/ Labels

   ○      Race/ethnicity, gender, colors

   ●      Ordinal Variables: Order

   ○      Agree / disagree scales, ranked orders, variables with discrete categories 

   ●      Interval Variables/ Ratio Variables (an absolute zero)

   ○      Temperature, age, income, any continuous variable

    

   Sampling Methods

   ●      Random Sampling - every person in known population gets and even chance of being selected

   ●      Systematic Sampling - every Nth unit or element from the sample frame list gets selected

   ●      Stratified Sampling - actual representation of the population- researcher divides a heterogenous population into several strate and then takes a sample from each stratum, usually with the size of the sample for each strata being proportional to the size of the strata in the overall population

   ●      Snowball Sampling - non-probability sampling where researcher relies on referral from initial subjects to identify other population members

    

   Assessing Measurement Validity and Reliability

   Validity assessment approach

   ●      Face validity - when test seems to be effective in terms of stated aim

   ●      Content validity - how well a test measures the behavior for which it is intended.

   Reliability assessment approach

   ●      Test---retest - A measure of consistency for test

   Issues of Validity and Inference:

   Internal Validity:

   Understanding the nature of internal validity, and threats to it, are critical to drawing causal inferences

   ○      Did you actually measure (accurately and validly) the concepts and variables you intended to?

   ○      Did you account for, or rule out, competing explanations?

   ●      Threats to internal Validity

   ○      Threat of history

   ○      Threat of maturation

   ○      Threat of testing

   ○      Threat of instrumentation

   ○      Threat of regression to the mean

   ○      Threat of selection bias

   ○      Threat of mortality

   External validity:

   Can the results be generalized to other settings beyond the specific sample gathered for the purposes of conducting a given study?

   ●      Threats to external validity:

   ○      Involve interaction of the nature of the study (and its treatment) with specific aspects of conducting an experiment (i.e., an interaction between treatment and testing)

   Type of Experiment

   True Experiment

   ●      Subjects are randomly assigned to treatment conditions

   ●      All phenomenon is completely controlled

   ●      Excellent for showing cause and effect relationships

   ●      High on internal validity

   Quasi-Experiment

   ●      Natural experiments

   ●      Subjects are already in the treatment level, experimenter has no control

   Similarities

   ●      Study participants are subjected to some type of treatment or condition

   ●      Some outcome of interest is measured

   ●      The researcher test whether differences in this outcome are related to the treatment

    

   Research Methods

   • -  Quantitative: measured in numbers
     Qualitative: measured as a category or nonnumeric unit.

   • -  Reliability: arriving at the same results – or at least very similar results – every time I re-conduct the study
     Validity: likely to happen and have not just appeared by chance

   • -  Likert scale measure: survey question that seek answers on a point scale

   • -  Dependent variable: depends on the influence of the independent variable Independent variable: responsible for causing the changes in the outcome

     Control variable: variables that are not under study but might affect the

     dependent variable

   • -  Classis Research Design

     has pretest and posttest control groups, simple, straight forward, groups

     are randomly selected.

   • -  Sampling designs:

     1 Simple Random Sampling – randomly chosen and each member has exactly an equal probability of being selected for the sample.
     2 Cluster Sampling – the population is divided into groups, then a random sample of the clusters in selected.

   • -  Inductive Approach: no hypothesis

   • -  Deductive Approach: hypothesis needs to be proves