The Research Writing Colloquium is a required core course in the LBJ School’s Ph.D. Program in Public Policy. It offers students a structured opportunity to develop a robust descriptive account of their impending doctoral research. The course is designed to help you develop your qualifying paper in preparation for your advancement to candidacy. The learning objectives of this course are as follows: 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 for shortfalls. Learn to generate verifiable hypotheses and construct (operationalized) theories. Develop causal graphs to understand the role of causal mechanisms in validating the theory. Justifying the appropriateness of a chosen empirical analysis technique.