Hello Class! My name is Kate Williamson, and I designed this guide to help you with the research portion of your POLS 304 Research-Based Project. Move through each tab of the guide to help you identify, narrow and find reliable sources on your topic.
If you have a research related question, here are a few options for you:
Happy Searching!
See your POLS 304 Canvas course for full project details!
The purpose of this project is to demonstrate your ability to identify and examine a political problem or challenge within the state of California, summarize and evaluate policy options designed to help resolve the problem or address the challenge, and present specific recommendations. To complete this project, you will need to identify and use a variety of appropriate resources to gather information and engage in critical analysis to create an informative and persuasive written policy analysis brief and an oral policy pitch.
The complete project consists of a progressive set of assignments that include
Detailed instructions, requirements, and basis for evaluation will be provided for each assignment of this project separately.
There are always political, social, and/or economic opportunities and challenges in California. California's leaders make and implement policies to attempt to address a variety of circumstances problems across a wide range of issue areas while navigating a complicated (and often changing) political landscape.
You will select one key issue or policy area as your inspiration, investigate and evaluate one related current problem and/or challenge and relevant policy options, and recommend one or more policy alternatives to address the problem and/or challenge.
In completing the various steps of this project you will
In a brief proposal (of about 100-200 words), you will (a) identify the issue or policy area and the key current problem or challenge you will address, (b) describe your initial beliefs about why this problem or challenge is important and must be addressed by a state or local government action, and (c) the nature or cause of the problem.
An evaluative annotated bibliography is a list of sources - books, articles, videos, or other sources - that includes complete citation information and a brief summary and evaluation of those sources with respect to their intended use (in this case, a policy analysis brief). This is different from a Works Cited list. A bibliography is a list of what you have read not just what you specifically reference in a final paper. Each annotation should be about one paragraph, between three to five sentences long (100-150 words).
For this project, your annotated bibliography will include a total of at least five (5) potential sources that represent a variety of types of sources - news and magazine articles, government documents, books, academic journal articles, videos, interviews, etc. It should be the result of the initial background research you conduct about an issue area to identify and select a problem or challenge and your evaluation of the availability and quality of potential sources relevant to this project.
In a 1000-1500 word written informative and persuasive policy analysis brief, present a concise summary of the most essential information about a clearly defined problem or challenge, policy options to address it, and specific and detailed recommendations on the best option to improve an existing policy or add a new policy.
Your brief must be based on evidence from at least five (5) different credible and appropriate sources.