Cost-benefit analysis (CBA) involves the use of microeconomics to formally assess the costs and benefits of different projects or investments. CBA is required for major regulations in the United States and is frequently used as a key input into major policy decisions. Understanding its advantages and limitations, and being able to distinguish well-conducted from poor analyses, is an important skill for a policy analyst.

In our increasingly data-reliant and data-saturated society, people who understand how to leverage data to generate insights have the power to change the world. Data visualization and storytelling is a crucial skill for policy and data analysts, communications and marketing professionals, and managers and decision-makers within nonprofits, social organizations and the government. With the advent of visualization tools that do not require coding, data storytelling in the digital age is also an attainable skill set for people with varying levels of technical ability.

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.

The goal of this course is to train advanced students on the principles, practices, and technologies required for good database design, management, and security. An introduction to the concepts and issues relating to data warehousing, governance, administration, security, privacy and alternative database structures will be provided. The course concentrates on building a firm foundation in information organization, storage, management, and security.

This half-semester course will focus on the analysis of data. We will discuss cleaning raw data – including trimming, variable transformations, and dealing with missing data – before turning to complex survey data. We will discuss how regression analysis differs when using complex survey data. Students will take real data and produce a cleaned version, as well as perform simple analyses using multiple regression. One key skill you will learn in this class is Stata, a commonly used statistics package.

Open only to students in the MSPP program. The goal of this course is to provide students with an introduction to key methods of quantitative policy analysis. We develop the statistical toolkit of regression analysis, reviewing the bivariate regression model and then continuing with multiple regression, and explore how these methods are applied to policy analysis in five benchmark techniques: randomized trials, direct regression analysis, instrumental variables, regression discontinuity, and difference in differences.

This course provides an introduction to the impact investing landscape and its evolution, players, and tools. After situating impact investing vis à vis both other forms of investing and other social change tools, we explore what makes an investment impactful - and how one would go about determining that and measuring it. Through a combination of readings, case studies, class discussion, and projects, students will gain deep insight into the perspective of the impact investor and consider how it relates to other stakeholders and to social change writ large.

All public and nonprofit organizations must assemble and report information on their performance. The need for performance measures goes beyond legal and regulatory requirements. To provide services effectively and efficiently, managers need information to make decisions. This course focuses on what performance measures are needed, how they should be created and what forms of communication are most effective.

This course serves as an introduction to those evaluation tools most commonly used to assess the performance of programs, services, and policies in both the public and private sectors. Topics include needs assessment; explication and assessment of program theory; implementation and process assessment; research design, measurement, and sampling for outcome and impact evaluation; and the ethics of conducting program evaluation. The focus is on critical analysis and understanding of both the underlying programs and their evaluations.

Multiple regression is the core statistical technique used by policy and finance analysts in their work. In this course, you will learn how to use and interpret this critical statistical technique. Specifically you will learn how to evaluate whether regression coefficients are biased, whether standard errors (and thus t statistics) are valid, and whether regressions used in policy and finance studies support causal arguments.

All public and nonprofit organizations must assemble and report information on their performance. The need for performance measures goes beyond legal and regulatory requirements. To provide services effectively and efficiently, managers need information to make decisions. This course focuses on what performance measures are needed, how they should be created and what forms of communication are most effective.

This course offers a hands-on opportunity for doctoral and advanced masters students to experience the practice of qualitative research. We will address the nature of qualitative research in the administrative and policy sciences, with ample opportunities to discuss the implications of the choices made in designing, implementing and reporting on the findings of a “mock” project which we will determine in class, with your input.