PA 388K: Advanced Topics in Public Policy – Research Writing Colloquium is a required core course in the LBJ School’s Ph.D. Program in Public Policy. The course offers a structured opportunity for students to develop a robust descriptive account of their impending doctoral research.
The course is specifically designed to help you develop your qualifying paper in preparation for your advancement to candidacy.
The learning objectives of this course are as follows:
1. Read and deconstruct the merits and limitations of the research design employed in a peer-reviewed publication. Doing so will help you emulate good models while correcting shortfalls.
2. Learn to generate verifiable hypotheses and construct (operationalized) theories.
3. Develop causal graphs to understand the role of causal mechanisms in validating theory.
4. Justifying the appropriateness of a chosen empirical analysis technique.