An Overview of the Pennsylvania Policy Database Project

1
An Overview of the Pennsylvania Policy Database
Project
2
Outline of Presentation

• Review of Database Design
• Project Benefits
• The PA Project Compared to the National Project
• The Pennsylvania Project Organization
• Information on our Website

3
Benefits to State Government

• Policy-makers and aides can more efficiently
  research recurring issues and previously-tried
  solutions, avoiding need to reinvent the wheel.
  It supplements existing information-retrieval
  systems.
• Integration of government records, news accounts,
  and opinion data should facilitate fuller
  insights into the underlying causes and politics
  of issues.
• Comparability with national database should
  provide deeper understanding of the
  inter-relationship of federal and state policies.

4
Benefits to State Government

• The project is consistent with public demands for
  increased transparency in government.
• It provides staffers and archivists with a new
  tool to respond to public inquiries.
• The project provides a centralized index to
  different kinds of state records that are housed
  in decentralized archives, and it provides
  incentives to upgrade record-keeping efforts.

5
Benefits to Educators, Students, Researchers,
Journalists, and the Public

• Provides journalists, the public, and university
  teachers, researchers, and students with free,
  web-based tools to better understand and analyze
  state politics and policies.
• Should also be useful to teachers and researchers
  interested in federalism, public policy
  development, legislative politics, urban
  politics, local government, and comparative
  politics (the comparison of political and
  policies across national and sub-national
  governments).
• Could attract talented students into careers in
  state government (also a benefit to the state).

6
The National Policy Agendas Project

• The national project was designed by political
  scientists Frank R. Baumgartner of Penn State and
  Bryan D. Jones of the University of Washington.
• Housed at the University of Washington, the
  project has been constructed and funded over the
  last 15 years with support from the National
  Science Foundation.
• The database allows users to integrate with a few
  mouse clicks a wide range of US government
  records, news media accounts, and public opinion
  data all coded by more than 200 major and minor
  policy topics from 1947 to the present.

7
Advantages of the National Project

• The national project is a unique database that
  allows systematic study of policy development
  over long periods of time and across venues and
  governments.
• Government archives are generally organized to
  maximize information retrieval, an important
  function. Records are indexed in multiple
  categories and depend heavily on key-word search.
• But as a result, they are not organized into
  consistent categories over time, making it
  difficult to fully understand the reasons for
  change and to recognize important patterns and
  trends. Language changes can fool key-word
  search strategies.

8
Advantages of the National Project

• Comparability Over Time. The database is not
  fooled by changes in the organization of
  government agencies, legislative operations
  (e.g., the number or names of committees),
  budgets, or the language of law or policy.
• Mutually Exclusive Categories. The database
  files each record in a single category but also
  refers researchers to related categories and
  original documents. It avoids double-counting
  policy activity.
• Comparability Across Venues. The database allows
  researchers to trace policy activity across
  venues (committee hearings, legislation,
  executive orders, court decisions, budgets, news
  accounts, public opinion polling) and
  governments.

9
Comparability Across Governments

• Researchers are now constructing projects with
  similar codebooks, datasets, and decision-rules
  for the following governments
• US (The National Project) Canada
• European Union England
• France Belgium
• Denmark Pennsylvania
• Other States?

10
Comparability Across Data Sets

• US (1947-2004)
• Congressional Hearings
• Public Laws
• Executive Orders
• State of the Union Addresses
• US Supreme Court Decisions
• Federal Budgets
• New York Times
• Congressional Quarterly
• Gallup Polls

• PA (1979-2004)
• Legislative Hearings
• Acts, Bills, Resolutions
• Executive Orders
• Governors Budget Addresses
• PA Supreme Court Decisions
• State Budgets
• Governors News Digests
• Governing Magazine
• State Polls

11
Policy Coding each piece of data is assigned a
single code based on its policy area. The
national codebook includes the following 20 Major
Topic Codes

• 1 Macroeconomics
• 2 Civil Rights, Liberties
• 3 Health
• 4 Agriculture
• 5 Labor, Employment, Immigration
• 6 Education
• 7 Environment
• 8 Energy
• 10 Transportation
• 12 Law, Crime, Family

• 13 Social Welfare
• 14 Community Development
• 16 Defense
• 17 Space, Science, Technology, Communications
• 18 Foreign Trade
• 19 International Affairs
• 20 Govt. Operations
• 24 State and Local Administration

12
The Pennsylvania Policy Codebook

• We attempted to adhere as closely as possible to
  the national codebook when redesigning it to
  account for state politics. All major topic codes
  are the same, but with some wording changes
• 1 Fiscal and Economic Issues (not Macroeconomics)
• 20 State Government Operations (not Government
  Operations)
• 24 Local Government and Governance (not State
  and Local Administration)

13
Examples of New Subtopics Appropriate to State
Government

• We added 19 new subtopics incorporating policy
  activities associated with state and local
  government
• Examples are
• 345 Provision and Regulation of Ambulance
  Services
• 712 Regulation of Hunting, Fishing, and
  Recreational Boating
• 1212 Probate and Estate Law
• 1213 Property and Real Estate Law
• 1214 State Tort Law and Tort Law Reform
• 1402 Zoning and Growth Management
• 1411 General State Economic Development
• 1527 Regulation of Services (Except Health Care)
• 2016 State Lottery Operations

14
Organization of the PA Project

• The plan is to complete construction of the
  database for the years 1979-2006 by the end of
  2007 and provide an accessible website by 2008.
• The project is guided by three advisory
  committees
• A bipartisan General Assembly Advisory Committee
• A University Advisory Committee
• A Committee of Directors of Legislative Service
  Agencies and State Record Centers

15
Six Universities Participate in the PA Project

• Temple University College of Liberal Arts
  (project HQ)
• The Graduate School of Public and International
  Affairs, University of Pittsburgh
• The Heinz School of Public Policy and Management,
• Carnegie Mellon University
• Penn State University, University Park
• Penn State University, Harrisburg
• The Fels Institute of Government, University of
  Pennsylvania.

16
Project Direction

• Each university team is led by a faculty member
  who administers grant funds and provides general
  oversight.
• Each university team also has a graduate research
  manager (GRM) who provides day-to-day direction
  to student researchers, is responsible for
  quality control, and maintains communication with
  the Temple staff.
• Each university team includes 4 to 6 researchers
  who abstract and code records by policy area. A
  total of 27 GRMs and researchers are working this
  summer.

17
Processing Records

• Student researchers abstract bills, resolutions,
  hearings, and news articles. Students do not
  apply policy codes to records for which they
  created the abstract.
• Using the policy codebook but working separately,
  two different students then code each record.
  The goal is to achieve 90 inter-coder
  reliability for major topics and 75 for minor
  topics.
• The graduate research manager checks student work
  and resolves differences in coding. The GRM
  meets with researchers each week to go over their
  work and discuss hard cases.

18
Assignments Processed
19
University Assignments

• Although the decentralized organization of the
  project presents challenges, it also has
  advantages.
• Governors news digests are not centrally
  archived.
• Governor Dick Thornburghs news digests (1979-86)
  are at the University of Pittsburgh.
• Governor Robert P. Caseys news digests (1987-94)
  are at Penn States University Park Campus.
• News digests for the period 1995-2006 are
  archived in the Capitol complex in Harrisburg.

20
Project Website Includes Codebook, Forms, and
Other Information

• Our web site is at www.temple.edu/papolicy.
  Although data are not yet available, you can see
  our code book, some coding forms, and the faculty
  leaders, graduate students, and researchers at
  each campus. It also lists members of our
  Commonwealth advisory committees.
• Through our website, you can also reach the
  national project (or go directly to
  www.policyagendas.org) and try using it to
  analyze policy change since World War II.
• And through our website you can reach the
  Comparative Agendas Project at Penn State
  University and learn more about projects in
  Europe and Canada.