This course is designed as an introduction to approaches and techniques used to evaluate public programs and public policy. This course explores a number of important public policy issues before the Connecticut General Assembly with key legislative leaders, focusing on the relationship between policy and politics. This course introduces some of the basic descriptive and analytic statistics that have been used in the political science literature. The course will cover descriptive statistics, cross-tabulations, and regression analysis. This simple principle of administrative life propels public organizations to collect, analyze, and report a vast quantity of statistical data.
Accountability also is served via the timely analysis and reporting of relevant statistics.
Organizational effectiveness depends directly upon the abilities of managers to understand and employ properly modern statistical tools and techniques. This course is designed to serve this purpose, to develop sound statistical reasoning powers, and to lay a foundation for more advanced courses in quantitative methods. This course addresses the modern theory of public sector organization.