how to do a policy analysis dissertation

A guide to policy analysis as a research method

Affiliations.

• 1 Department of Public Health, School of Psychology and Public Health, Latrobe University, Bundoora, Victoria, Australia.
• 2 Department of Global, Urban and Social Studies, RMIT University, 124 La Trobe Street, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.
• 3 Department of Social Sciences, Faculty of Health, Arts and Design, Swinburne University, 24 Wakefield Street, Hawthorn, Victoria, Australia.
• 4 Department of Nutrition Dietetics and Food, Monash University, Level 1, 264 Ferntree Gully Road, Notting Hill, Victoria, Australia.
• PMID: 30101276
• DOI: 10.1093/heapro/day052

Policy analysis provides a way for understanding how and why governments enact certain policies, and their effects. Public health policy research is limited and lacks theoretical underpinnings. This article aims to describe and critique different approaches to policy analysis thus providing direction for undertaking policy analysis in the field of health promotion. Through the use of an illustrative example in nutrition it aims to illustrate the different approaches. Three broad orientations to policy analysis are outlined: (i) Traditional approaches aim to identify the 'best' solution, through undertaking objective analyses of possible solutions. (ii) Mainstream approaches focus on the interaction of policy actors in policymaking. (iii) Interpretive approaches examine the framing and representation of problems and how policies reflect the social construction of 'problems'. Policy analysis may assist understanding of how and why policies to improve nutrition are enacted (or rejected) and may inform practitioners in their advocacy. As such, policy analysis provides researchers with a powerful tool to understand the use of research evidence in policymaking and generate a heightened understanding of the values, interests and political contexts underpinning policy decisions. Such methods may enable more effective advocacy for policies that can lead to improvements in health.

Keywords: interpretive policy analysis; mainstream policy analysis; nutrition; public health; sugar sweetened beverage tax.

© The Author(s) 2018. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions, please email: [email protected].

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A guide to policy analysis as a research method

• Nutrition Dietetics & Food

Research output : Contribution to journal › Article › Research › peer-review

Policy analysis provides a way for understanding how and why governments enact certain policies, and their effects. Public health policy research is limited and lacks theoretical underpinnings. This article aims to describe and critique different approaches to policy analysis thus providing direction for undertaking policy analysis in the field of health promotion. Through the use of an illustrative example in nutrition it aims to illustrate the different approaches. Three broad orientations to policy analysis are outlined: (i) Traditional approaches aim to identify the 'best' solution, through undertaking objective analyses of possible solutions. (ii) Mainstream approaches focus on the interaction of policy actors in policymaking. (iii) Interpretive approaches examine the framing and representation of problems and how policies reflect the social construction of 'problems'. Policy analysis may assist understanding of how and why policies to improve nutrition are enacted (or rejected) and may inform practitioners in their advocacy. As such, policy analysis provides researchers with a powerful tool to understand the use of research evidence in policymaking and generate a heightened understanding of the values, interests and political contexts underpinning policy decisions. Such methods may enable more effective advocacy for policies that can lead to improvements in health.

• interpretive policy analysis
• mainstream policy analysis
• public health
• sugar sweetened beverage tax

This output contributes to the following UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

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• 10.1093/heapro/day052

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• Link to publication in Scopus

T1 - A guide to policy analysis as a research method

AU - Browne, Jennifer

AU - Coffey, Brian

AU - Cook, Kay

AU - Meiklejohn, Sarah

AU - Palermo, Claire

PY - 2019/10

Y1 - 2019/10

N2 - Policy analysis provides a way for understanding how and why governments enact certain policies, and their effects. Public health policy research is limited and lacks theoretical underpinnings. This article aims to describe and critique different approaches to policy analysis thus providing direction for undertaking policy analysis in the field of health promotion. Through the use of an illustrative example in nutrition it aims to illustrate the different approaches. Three broad orientations to policy analysis are outlined: (i) Traditional approaches aim to identify the 'best' solution, through undertaking objective analyses of possible solutions. (ii) Mainstream approaches focus on the interaction of policy actors in policymaking. (iii) Interpretive approaches examine the framing and representation of problems and how policies reflect the social construction of 'problems'. Policy analysis may assist understanding of how and why policies to improve nutrition are enacted (or rejected) and may inform practitioners in their advocacy. As such, policy analysis provides researchers with a powerful tool to understand the use of research evidence in policymaking and generate a heightened understanding of the values, interests and political contexts underpinning policy decisions. Such methods may enable more effective advocacy for policies that can lead to improvements in health.

AB - Policy analysis provides a way for understanding how and why governments enact certain policies, and their effects. Public health policy research is limited and lacks theoretical underpinnings. This article aims to describe and critique different approaches to policy analysis thus providing direction for undertaking policy analysis in the field of health promotion. Through the use of an illustrative example in nutrition it aims to illustrate the different approaches. Three broad orientations to policy analysis are outlined: (i) Traditional approaches aim to identify the 'best' solution, through undertaking objective analyses of possible solutions. (ii) Mainstream approaches focus on the interaction of policy actors in policymaking. (iii) Interpretive approaches examine the framing and representation of problems and how policies reflect the social construction of 'problems'. Policy analysis may assist understanding of how and why policies to improve nutrition are enacted (or rejected) and may inform practitioners in their advocacy. As such, policy analysis provides researchers with a powerful tool to understand the use of research evidence in policymaking and generate a heightened understanding of the values, interests and political contexts underpinning policy decisions. Such methods may enable more effective advocacy for policies that can lead to improvements in health.

KW - interpretive policy analysis

KW - mainstream policy analysis

KW - nutrition

KW - public health

KW - sugar sweetened beverage tax

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U2 - 10.1093/heapro/day052

DO - 10.1093/heapro/day052

M3 - Article

C2 - 30101276

AN - SCOPUS:85074379871

SN - 0957-4824

JO - Health Promotion International

JF - Health Promotion International

Qualitative Methods for Policy Analysis: Case Study Research Strategy

• First Online: 10 April 2022

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• Sarath S. Kodithuwakku 3  

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Many policy researchers are predisposed to use either quantitative or qualitative research methods regardless of the research questions at hand, leading to varying degrees of gaps in their findings and policy recommendations. Qualitative approaches effectively address why and how types of research questions to complement the answers for who , what , where , how many , and how much research questions, obtained using quantitative research methods, enabling researchers to make policy outcomes meaningful and contextually relevant. This chapter introduces the case study as an appropriate research strategy for accommodating qualitative and quantitative methods, followed by a brief account of qualitative research methods.

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Research Methods for Public Policy

Perspectives on Policy Analysis: A Framework for Understanding and Design

Qualitative Evidence in Health Policy Analysis

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Sarath S. Kodithuwakku

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Jeevika Weerahewa

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Andrew Jacque

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Kodithuwakku, S.S. (2022). Qualitative Methods for Policy Analysis: Case Study Research Strategy. In: Weerahewa, J., Jacque, A. (eds) Agricultural Policy Analysis. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-3284-6_7

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Policy document analysis

Presented by Jonathan Hammond and Imelda McDermott.

The session introduced some of the processes and principles relevant to the analysis of policy documents. This approach, informed by discourse analysis, can be useful both as a means of framing organisational research and in order to interrogate issues in the field. It provides opportunities for exploring what is taken for granted and unspoken.

By comparing messages in policy documents with situated practices in local contexts it is possible to build up a rich picture of organisational life and the multiple “realities” it comprises. Applied examples of how documentary analysis has been used in the study of health policy and organisations will be provided. Jon used examples from his PhD research in a CCG to show the usefulness of this approach.

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9 Policy Analysis as Critique

John S. Dryzek Centenary Professor, ARC Laureate Fellow, Centre for Deliberative Democracy and Global Governance, University of Canberra

• Published: 02 September 2009
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This article discusses the concept of critique, which is treated rightly as basic to the entire enterprise of policy analysis. Critical policy analysis is also discussed in this article, along with two of its opposites, namely accommodation and technocracy. The article determines that critical policy analysis is a demanding vocation, due to the number of obstacles that stand in its way. However, it is slowly being incorporated into an emerging network society of decentralized problem solving. In the democratic world, critical policy analysis has the capacity to help realize the idea of a policy science of democracy.

Policy analysis encompasses a variety of activities concerned with the creation, compilation, and application of evidence, testimony, argument, and interpretation in order to examine, evaluate, and improve the content and process of public policy. This chapter will look at one such activity, that of critique. Critique is treated not just as one thing that policy analysts might choose to do, but as rightly basic to their whole enterprise. Public policy processes feature communication in context with practical effect, and such communication is always amenable to critique oriented to change for the better. Critical policy analysis therefore constitutes a program for the foundations of the field. All policy analysis should have a critical component, if only to establish that the social problem at hand is not defined in such a way as to advantage particular interests in indefensible ways.

1. Critique and its Opposites

The place of critical policy analysis can be approached through reference to two of its opposites: technocracy and accommodation.

The intent of technocratic policy analysis is to identify cause and effect relationships that can be manipulated by public policy under central and coordinated control. At its most ambitious, technocratic analysis could be allied to the nineteenth century positivism of Comte and Saint‐Simon, who sought the establishment of a set of causal laws of society that provided points of leverage for policy makers in pursuit of social perfection. Those dreams may be long dead, and positivism long rejected even by philosophers of natural science, but the terms “positivist” and “post‐positivist” still animate disputes in the policy field ( for example, Durning 1999; Lynn 1999 ). And the idea that policy analysis is about control of cause and effect lives on in optimizing techniques drawn from welfare economics and elsewhere (Stokey and Zeckhauser 1978) , and policy evaluation that seeks only to identify the causal impact of policies. Technocratic analysis implicitly assumes an omniscient and benevolent decision maker untroubled by politics (Majone 1989 refers to “decisionism”) . However, the viewpoint of analysis is not necessarily the same as that of any identifiable real‐world decision maker, for two reasons. First, a single locus of decision making may not exist. Second, technocratic analysis often proceeds from its own frame of reference which may embody values different from those of policy makers. For example, cost—benefit analysis is committed to economic efficiency, a value generally held in poor regard by those steeped in the politics of public policy.

It should be stressed that technocratic analysis is not the same as quantitative and statistical analysis. Technocracy can use statistics—but so can critique. There is a long tradition of social reformers gathering statistics concerning poverty, malnutrition, and illness, which can then be presented to indict a social system (Bulmer 1983) . Only hardline followers of Michel Foucault would condemn any gathering of social statistics as oppression, treating descriptive statistics as constitutive of the normalizing gaze of a state that constructs populations as objects to be managed.

Accommodative policy analysis seeks to attach itself to the frame of reference of the policy maker. As such it is a loyalist endeavor in which the successful policy analyst is one who adopts views about the definition of problems, goals, and acceptable solutions from his or her organizational environment. Within these constraints the analyst will still try to bring some distinctive expertise to bear. Explicit advocacy of this orientation is rare (but see Palumbo and Nachmias 1983) , though it does capture aspects of the working life of many analysts (Meltsner 1976) , and some of the activities of management consultants.

Critical policy analysis can be positioned in terms of explicit rejection of both technocratic and accommodative images (Bobrow and Dryzek 1987, 161–8) .

2. Critique and its Politics

For all their differences, technocratic and accommodative images of policy analysis both assume that the key contribution of analysis to improving the condition of the world is the enlightenment of those in positions of power so they can better manipulate social systems. In contrast, critical policy analysis specifies that the key task of analysis is enlightenment of those suffering at the hands of power in the interests of action on their part to escape suffering. By definition, a critical theory is directed at an audience of sufferers in order to make plain to them the causes of their suffering. It is validated through reflective acceptance on the part of the audience, and, ultimately, action based on this acceptance (Fay 1987) .

Many theories fall under this general critical conception. For example, the Marxist critique of capitalist political economy was directed at the emancipation of the working class, and unmasked ideological and material forces that oppressed the proletariat. When it comes to public policy, it is not hard to show that policies justified as being in the public interest often have benefits skewed toward dominant classes, be they tax cuts for the rich, subsidies for agribusiness, or public transport systems that serve wealthy suburbs while bypassing the urban poor. The Frankfurt School (Adorno, Horkheimer, and Marcuse) developed critical theories of modernity in its entirety, especially in terms of its rationality that destroys the more congenial aspects of human association. Feminist critique highlights the oppressive but often unnoticed effects of patriarchy. Though often a bit weak on how suffering might be overcome, the work of Michel Foucault showed how power could be pervasive and constitutive of oppressive discourses about criminality, health, madness, and sexuality. In radical environmental thought, attempts have been made to link the liberation of human and non‐human nature. The critical legal studies movement in the United States has tried to show how ostensibly neutral laws, rules, and associated practices systematically oppress disadvantaged categories of people.

These examples might suggest that critical policy analysis is tied to a radical leftist agenda. Two responses are possible here. The first is that technocratic and accommodative policy analyses also have ideological associations. The center of gravity of technocratic analysis is center‐left, in that much of it believes in the possibility of benign active government. Accommodation is center‐right, in that it adjusts itself in conservative fashion to the prevailing distribution of political power, though this judgement would have to be qualified if a power center such as an elected government had leftist inclinations.

A second response is that the logical structure of critique is content free. Only when the content is filled in does it happen to be the case that particular critiques—or at least the kind of broad‐gauge theories just mentioned—turn out to have radical left associations. At least one important—indeed, foundational—policy field application lacks any such association, and to this I now turn.

3. Critique in the Origins of the Policy Sciences

This foundational application can be found in the policy sciences movement that began in the 1940s, whose most important figure was Harold Lasswell (see especially Lerner and Lasswell 1951) . Lasswell was committed to the idea of a “policy science of democracy.” But he doubted that control by existing political elites, or indeed any political elites, could bring this about, because of the psychopathology he believed often accompanied individual pursuit of political power. Lasswell hoped that policy scientists could rise above this sort of motivation, and come to resemble psychological clinicians in their extraordinary self‐understanding and commitment to a code of professional ethics (Lasswell 1965, 14) . He explored innovations such as the decision seminar, a forum for social learning that would provide an information‐rich and interactive environment transcending politics and policy as usual. The audience for Lasswellian critique ranged from existing policy elites to society as a whole. The substantive content was equally wide ranging; most famously, he warned about the need to act against development of a “garrison state” (1941), as alleged pursuit of national security led to restrictions on freedom and democracy. Such a warning is no less pertinent today than in the 1930s when Lasswell first made it. The garrison state would be forestalled by wide recognition of the validity of the warning, and resistance based on that knowledge.

In common with the critical theories already mentioned, Lasswell was concerned about some very large matters: the “progressive democratization of mankind” (1948, 221) versus the garrison state. However, policy analysis as critique can concern itself with more limited issues. The idea is to identify and uncover influences on policy content from dominant ideologies, discourses, or material forces. The policy in question could be (say) a matter of a nation's economic strategy under sway of market liberalism, such that there appears to be no alternative to policies of deregulation, free trade, capital mobility, and privatization. Such influence might be a matter of material forces—if a government is punished for its deviation with capital flight, disinvestment, and attacks on its currency. Or it could be matter of the discourse of globalization: these material forces may not be especially powerful, but all key actors believe they are, and so act accordingly. Hirst and Thompson (1996) try to explode claims about both the novelty and material reality of globalization, treating globalization as more an ideological matter of imposing the market liberal “Washington Consensus” on the world. On their account governments in fact retain substantial scope for policies that pursue social justice, and can implement interventionist economic policies without the dire consequences predicted by economic globalization advocates. Alternatively, the influence of globalization on policy might plausibly come from some mixture of material and discursive forces, in which case the first task of the critical analysis is to ascertain the mix of the material and the discursive, and the processes through which they constitute one another.

4. The Linguistic Turn and its Critical Twist

Policy making in large part involves the construction of meaning through language, and policy analysis is itself a symbolic activity. Fischer and Forester (1993) speak of an “argumentative turn” in policy analysis and planning. Logically prior is a “linguistic turn” that recognizes the importance of language in constituting both policy analysis and policy making, because argument is just one specific kind of language. The language of policy might be highly formalized in (say) optimizing techniques; or it might be informal speech embodying only everyday experiential knowledge, or it might be some mix. At any rate, language is never a neutral medium. The idea of critical policy analysis fits well with this linguistic turn, and, with the waning of material critique of the kind that helped define Marxism, most critical policy analysis is today joined to this kind of linguistic orientation to the policy world. Marxists and others attuned to material critique might well bemoan this turn, just as they bemoan the preoccupation of the multicultural left (especially in the United States) with questions of recognition of oppressed minorities (including wealthy ones) to the exclusion of distribution.

In the wake of the linguistic turn, the first task of any piece of policy analysis is the explication of the meanings that are or were present in any particular policy setting. The task is primary because these meanings condition problem definition, which in turn determines (for example) the kind of data or evidence that is relevant. Often key meanings are submerged or taken for granted, and tracing their origins, interconnections with other meanings, and consequences can be quite demanding. A family of techniques covering interpretation, narrative analysis, and discourse analysis is available here.

Interpretive policy analysis (Yanow 1996) focuses most directly on meanings as constructed by participants in particular policy processes. Public policies themselves are not approached as means for the achievement of some goal, but, rather, “modes for the expression of human meaning” (Yanow 2003, 229) . The approach can be anthropological, treating policy processes as cultural practice. Classic anthropology of British, and of US federal, budgeting can be found in the studies of Heclo and Wildavsky (1974) and Wildavsky (1974) , who elucidate the informal understandings shared by participants that make the process work. Participants share all kinds of assumptions about baselines, the need to come in high but not too high when requesting funds, and so forth that violate the notionally rationalistic and goal‐oriented aspects of budgeting. The way meanings are created in implementation can produce consequences not intended by policy makers. Yanow (2003, 241) points to the example of remedial educational programs that require teachers to line up and so identify children in need of help, thus highlighting and reinforcing the very categories of problematic family background and poverty whose consequences the policy was designed to combat.

Narrative analysis (Roe 1994) focuses mainly on stories that are told by participants in policy processes. The language of policy, in common with the language of many social settings, features the telling of stories much more than it features argument, deductive logic, or still less quantitative optimization. The effect of a good story is to convince its audience that an issue ought to be framed in a particular way. The facts never “speak for themselves.” For example, a story about rape and murder amid ethnic conflict could be told by a nationalist demagogue in terms of violated ethnic innocence and collective ethnic guilt of its perpetrators. The same facts could also support a story of violation of basic human rights and universal principles of humanity. The action consequences of each story would be vastly different.

Discourse analysis focuses on larger systems of meaning in which stories are often embedded, and which condition policy content. For example, Hajer (1995) traces the emergence of a discourse of ecological modernization in Dutch environmental policy that sees pollution abatement as instrumental to economic development, and does not require conclusive scientific proof of a hazard before acting. He contrasts this with a “traditional‐pragmatic” discourse that dominated British environmental policy, emphasizing end‐of‐pipe regulation rather than redesign of production processes, and requiring scientific proof of damage from a pollutant before policy action. In each case, analysis is needed to uncover dominant discourses, which may be so dominant as to be taken for granted by actors who treat them as natural, and are thus unaware of their existence.

The explication of meaning is a necessary but of itself insufficient step on the road to critique. If policy analysis is in large part concerned with evaluating and improving the content and process of policy, then interpretation, narrative, and discourse analysis of themselves fall short. They may indeed produce better descriptions and understandings of the way the world works, but they may also leave the world pretty much as they find it, even if their results are widely disseminated and accepted. For example, a discourse analysis might lay bare the dominant discourses in a policy area—but then conclude this dominance is immutable. This is quite a common position to hold in, for example, explications of the impact of discourses of globalization in economic policy, which provide little room for maneuver on the part of national governments. Some kinds of interpretative analysis may even support an accommodating image of policy analysis. This is a particular danger for analyses based on depth interviews of elites, which may end up reproducing the world view of these elites.

5. Sources of Critical Standards

The impetus of critique is also toward evaluation and improvement, not just description and explication. Critical policy analysis in linguistic mode can hold up the results yielded by interpretation, narrative, and discourse analysis to critical standards. Where, then, might these standards come from? There are several possible answers, all of which begin from the fact that any meanings uncovered are likely to be contestable, if not actually contested (Fischer 2003, 46) . The possibility of contestation arises from the identification of contingency in interpretation, narrative, and discourse. For contingency implies there is some alternative, however repressed or marginalized it might be by dominant understandings.

One standard can be found in the critical communications theory associated with Jürgen Habermas (1984) . Habermas's own critical theory of society is grounded in the implicit claims to truth, sincerity, comprehensibility, and appropriateness attached to utterances in intersubjective communication. In this light, a social situation can be described as communicatively rational to the extent it is constituted by the reflective understanding of competent actors. Communication among them ought to be free from deception, self‐deception, strategizing, and the exercise of power. The normative principles of communicative rationality can be applied to evaluate both the content of understandings that back a particular policy or position, and the process that produces policies (Healey 1993) .

When it comes to the content of understandings, critical policy analysis deploying principles of communicative rationality is in a position to unmask ideological claims—ideology here being understood in the pejorative sense as the specification of false necessities. “Globalization” is often used in this ideological sense, as specifying a set of policies that governments must pursue unless they want to be left behind. Other ideological claims might be based on the inevitability of technological change that must be accepted rather than questioned, though this sort of ideology is weaker today than in the 1950s. On the other hand, the kind of ideology that legitimizes all kinds of repressive measures in the name of “war against terror” has grown stronger after 2001. Violations of communicative rationality can also come in more mundane form, operating through interest rather than ideology. For example, tobacco companies long denied the seriousness of the damage of their products to human health, suppressing results of their own studies in clear violation of the “sincerity” aspect of communicative rationality.

Communicative rationality is not problem free as a critical standard. Rigidly applied, it might rule out the tacit knowledge and common sense of ordinary people and policy actors, or the traditional, non‐scientific understandings of indigenous peoples about their land. Young (1996) points out that seemingly neutral rules of dialogue can in practice discriminate against those not versed in the finer points of rational argument (though Young's point will not ring true to those who have actually observed communicative exercises involving lay participants). The solution here may be expansion of communicative rationality beyond Habermas's own narrow and unnecessary emphasis on argument to encompass other forms of communication such as Young's own trio of greeting, rhetoric, and storytelling, or beyond to gossip and jokes. All kinds of communication can be assessed in terms of their capacity to induce reflection, their non‐coerciveness, and their ability to connect the particular experience of an interlocutor to some more general principle (Dryzek 2000, 68–71) .

Communitarians would have a different problem, believing that communicative rationality is too open and ungrounded in the reality of particular societies. Communitarians would stress the particular standards embodied in a society's traditions—for example, the regime values embodied in the United States constitution. While conservative, this position does enable a kind of critique—for example of policies that violate the spirit of the constitution (this is of course the basis for legal challenges to policy decisions, but it could also be the basis for policy analytic challenges). Communitarian standards and communicative rationality could be thought of as different levels of evaluation (Fischer 1980) . Perhaps the regime values of one's society can sometimes be treated as unproblematic standards—but sometimes they too may be in need of critical scrutiny. For example, the US constitution originally sanctioned racism and slavery, eventually challenged on the basis of more universalistic principles (though those principles were derived from a variety of sources, including religious ones, so it was never just a matter of anything like communicative rationality being brought to bear).

A more hands‐off approach to critical standards is also possible: one could let them emerge in the contestation of different understandings. For example, in criminal justice policy, the recent development of restorative justice approaches challenges more traditional understandings based on (respectively) the psychopathology of the criminal mind, the rational choices of criminals as they calculate the costs and benefits of particular crimes, and the miserable social conditions that drive some individuals into a life of crime. Restorative justice postulates community reintegration as both a core value in itself and instrumental to the rehabilitation of offenders and reduction of crime rates. This challenge has to be met by more traditional discourses of criminal justice; adherents of these discourses may on reflection choose to reject the challenge or modify their own normative stance in response to it, but they can hardly ignore it. From such contestation some degree of agreement on standards might emerge—or it might not. But even if it does, the conditions of emergence are crucial, and themselves need to be held up to some critical standard. So the hands‐off approach is ultimately not quite sufficient.

Finally, an agonistic approach to the generation of critical standards would insist that opinions are different and will always remain so because they are grounded in different identities and experiences. Agonism's procedural standards specify a particular kind of respectful orientation that treats others as adversaries rather than enemies, and interaction with them as critical engagement rather than strategizing (Mouffe 1999) . However, agonism as usually presented lacks connection to collective decision making of the sort that helps define the field of public policy, focusing instead on the nature of interpersonal and intergroup relationships.

6. Critique of Processes and Institutions

Irrespective of where one looks for its standards, critique need not stop at the content of policies and their underlying understandings, and can extend to questions of the procedure through which policies are produced. Communicative rationality in particular is readily applied in procedural terms (Bernstein 1983, 191–4) , providing criteria for how disputes across competing interpretations might be resolved, while respecting a basic plurality of interpretations. The criteria can then be deployed to evaluate prevailing policy processes. For example, it is possible to criticize legal processes for their restrictions on the kinds of arguments that can be made. Kemp (1985) discusses legalistic public inquiries on nuclear power issues in the UK which ruled out arguments that questioned the economic benefits of nuclear energy while allowing economic arguments in favor, featured disparities in financial resources available to proponents and objectors, and allowed proponents to invoke the Official Secrets Act at key points to silence debate.

Critical policy analysis can also inform the design or creation of alternative processes. Such designs might range from Lasswell's decision seminar to more recent experiments in informed lay citizen deliberation—such as citizen's juries, consensus conferences, and deliberative opinion polls. Fung (2003) refers to such exercises as “recipes for public spheres,” though each is just one moment in the life of a larger public sphere where public opinion is created. Discursive designs can also involve partisans rather than lay citizens in processes such as mediation, regulatory negotiation, impact assessment, and policy dialogues (Dryzek 1987 a ) . Because they involve partisans, these sorts of processes can feature the exercise of power and strategic action; critical policy analysis can try to move them in a more communicative direction. A commitment to critique means that “design” should itself be a communicative process involving those who will participate in the institution in question and be the subjects of any decisions it reaches. Innes and Booher (2003, 49) show how participants in a discursive process for water management in California created new institutions and procedures that were more open and cooperative and so capable of responding more effectively to changing circumstances. Institutional design of this sort could never resemble engineering.

Participants in institutional reconstruction should also be alive to the degree seemingly discursive innovations can be introduced for thoroughly strategic reasons. For example, such designs have found favor in health policy in the United Kingdom. Their bureaucratic sponsors can present the recommendations of bodies such as citizens' panels as the true face of public opinion, and so circumvent troublesome lobby groups that also claim to represent public interests (Parkinson 2004) . Yet such forums once established can escape and sometimes dismay their sponsors.

In its commitment to institutions that try to overcome power inequalities and engage citizens in effective dialogue, critical policy analysis joins recent democratic theory in its overarching commitment to deliberation. Democratic theory took a “deliberative turn” around 1990, under which legitimacy is located in the capacity and opportunity of those subject to a policy decision to participate in deliberation about its content (Chambers 2003) . Thus can the Lasswellian aspiration of a “policy science of democracy” now be redeemed—if not quite in the way Lasswell himself saw the matter. Critical policy analysis looks beyond technocracy and thin liberal democracy to a deeper democracy where distinctions between citizens, representatives, and experts lose their force (deLeon 1997) . Such a project can expect resistance from both practitioners of technocratic policy analysis and powerful interests that have a stake in perpetuating the political‐economic status quo. However, important actors may (as I have noted) sometimes find it expedient to sponsor discursive exercises, providing an opening for more authentic democratization.

7. From Weberian Hierarchy to Networked Governance

Recognizing this institutional agenda, a technocratic policy analyst might accept its attractions in terms of democratic values, yet resist it on the grounds of the sheer complexity of policy problems in the contemporary world. The Weberian argument is that intelligence for complex problems has to be coordinated by the apex of a hierarchy that can organize expertise and coordinate responses across the aspects of a complex issue. The apex should divide complex problems into sets and subsets, each of which is allocated to a subordinate unit in an administrative organization chart. Weber himself believed that bureaucracy flourishes in the modern world precisely because it is the best organizational means for the resolution of complex social problems (though he was also alive to the pathologies of bureaucracy, and its suppression of the more congenial aspects of human society). Intelligent problem decomposition—and administrative organization—here means minimizing interactions across the sets and subsets into which complex problems are divided. The apex of the hierarchy can then piece together the parts provided by each of the subunits in order to craft overall solutions.

At a theoretical level, an anti‐Weberian argument can be mustered to the effect that this approach works only for what Simon (1981) calls “near‐decomposable” problems. Higher orders of complexity mean that the density of interactions across the boundaries of sets and subsets requires that no intelligent decomposition and bureaucratic division of labor exists, and so the coordinating capacities of the apex of the hierarchy are overwhelmed (Dryzek 1987 b ) . Better, then, to accept these sorts of interactions rather than repress them, and promote decentralized communication across diverse competent individuals concerned with different aspects of an issue. While it is possible to adduce examples on both sides of this dispute, some recent developments in practice support the anti‐Weberian side, particularly when it comes to “new governance” and networked problem solving (Rhodes 2000) . Networks themselves are not necessarily democratic, and can indeed facilitate escape from accountability to a broader public by hiding power and responsibility. But whether or not they are democratic, networks are non‐hierarchical, and often defended precisely for their capacity to handle complex problems. Critical policy analysis can remind proponents of new governance of the need for undistorted communication and actor competence in networks (Hajer and Wagenaar 2003) , and for resistance to the efforts of new public managers to control networks. This kind of critical analysis is at home in the network society, even as it must often struggle against anti‐democratic and exclusionary tendencies in networks themselves. In contrast, technocratic policy analysis flounders in the network society, because its implicit audience is a system controller at the apex of a hierarchy. One defining feature of a network is the absence of any sovereign center; problem solving involves many actors in different jurisdictions. These actors might be politicans and bureaucrats; they might also be corporations, transnational organizations, lobby groups, social movements, and citizens. “Speaking truth to power,” as Wildavsky (1979) characterizes the main task of policy analysis, becomes very different when power itself is dispersed and fluid (Hajer 2003, 182) . Analysts become interlocutors in a multidirectional conversation, not whisperers in the ears of the sovereign.

8. Tasks for the Critical Policy Analyst

The foregoing discussion suggests the following tasks for the analyst under the general heading of critique:

Explication of dominant meanings in policy content and process.

Uncovering suppressed or marginalized meanings.

Identification of what Lindblom (1990) calls “agents of impairment” that suppress alternative meanings. These agents might include ideologies, dominant discourses, lack of information, lack of education, bureaucratic obfuscation, restrictions on the admissibility of particular kinds of evidence and communication, and processes designed to baffle rather than enlighten.

Identification of the ways in which the communicative capacities of policy actors might be equalized.

Evaluation of institutions in terms of communicative standards.

Participation in the design of institutions that might do better.

Criticism of technocratic policy analysis. Even ostensibly useless technocratic policy analysis draws on and reinforces a discourse of disempowerment of those who are not either experts or members of the policy‐making elite. The cumulative weight of such analysis may reinforce the idea that public policy is only for experts and elites ( Edelman 1977 ; Dryzek 1990, 116–17 ).

To what extent can these tasks be addressed in policy studies curriculum design? One reason for the persistence of technocratic policy analysis is that its techniques can be taught as items in a tool kit. Once analysts find themselves in policy‐making processes they can display this tool kit as a badge of professional respectability. But what analysts actually do in practice is often more consistent with the communicative image that is one starting point of critical policy analysis. They ask questions, draw attention to particular issues, investigate and develop stories, make arguments, and use rhetoric to convince others of particular meanings (Forester 1983) . So curriculum design for critical policy analysis might begin with specifying that analysts preach what they practice.

Critical policy analysis too has its techniques and logics, not least interpretative, narrative, and discourse analysis. These too can be taught, as can logics of policy evaluation that retain a critical awareness of different sorts of values and world‐views that can be brought to bear (Fischer 1995) . However, critical analysts also need to reflect on what tools should be used in what circumstances, and to what effect. Analysts should be aware of the context to which they contribute—and help constitute (Torgerson 1986, 41) . Forester (1981) recommends a code of communicative ethics for all policy actors, including analysts, that forbids manipulation, hiding and distorting information, deflecting attention from important questions, and the displacement of debate by the exercise of power or claims to expertise. These requirements are inconsistent with the way professions often work—especially when it comes to forsaking the mystique which is one source of professional power (Torgerson 1985, 254–5) .

9. Conclusion

Critical policy analysis is, then, a demanding vocation. Its practitioners cannot easily seek professional advancement on the basis of their privileged mastery of a set of tools. Their craft promises to make life difficult for occupants of established centers of power. But despite the forces that stand in its way, policy analysis as critique can draw comfort from the fact that, unlike its technocratic opposite, it fits readily into an emerging network society of decentralized problem solving. And in a democratic world, it can draw strength from its capacity to help realize the idea of a policy science of democracy.

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• Getting started
• Criteria for a problem formulation
• Find who and what you are looking for
• Too broad, too narrow, or o.k.?
• Test your knowledge
• Lesson 5: Meeting your supervisor
• Getting started: summary
• Literature search
• Searching for articles
• Searching for Data
• Databases provided by your library
• Other useful search tools
• Free text, truncating and exact phrase
• Combining search terms – Boolean operators
• Keep track of your search strategies
• Problems finding your search terms?
• Different sources, different evaluations
• Extract by relevance
• Lesson 4: Obtaining literature
• Literature search: summary
• Research methods
• Combining qualitative and quantitative methods
• Collecting data
• Analysing data
• Strengths and limitations
• Explanatory, analytical and experimental studies
• The Nature of Secondary Data
• How to Conduct a Systematic Review
• Directional Policy Research
• Strategic Policy Research
• Operational Policy Research
• Conducting Research Evaluation
• Research Methods: Summary
• Project management
• Project budgeting
• Data management plan
• Quality Control
• Project control
• Project management: Summary
• Writing process
• Title page, abstract, foreword, abbreviations, table of contents
• Introduction, methods, results
• Discussion, conclusions, recomendations, references, appendices, layout
• Use citations correctly
• Use references correctly
• Bibliographic software
• Writing process – summary
• Research methods /

Lesson 4: Policy Research

Policy research can be either a field study (primary research) or a desk study (secondary research) or both. Generally, there are two types of policy research:

• Policy Analysis – This includes a ‘best choice of comparison’ of various policies, procedures, and strategies for the purposes of choosing the most suitable one. This method of evaluation is often used in policy formulation and when defining implementation processes and strategies.
• Policy Evaluation – Research methods are employed to determine the impact of a particular policy, program or procedure. Research assessment is introduced after the implementation of the policy or program and used to evaluate success and correct course if necessary.

Conducting Policy Analysis

Policy analysis is most commonly used when formulating policy or designing an implementation strategy. Policy analysis takes place before program implementation or as part of a policy redesign. When conducting policy analysis it is important to understand what level of policy is being designed and implemented. In general, there are three levesl of policy:

Learn more about the different policies in the following.

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Integrating policy analysis into your qualitative research

It’s easy to get seduced by the excitement of primary data collection, and plan your qualitative research around methods that give you rich data from face-to-face contact with participants

Daniel Turner

It’s easy to get seduced by the excitement of primary data collection, and plan your qualitative research around methods that give you rich data from face-to-face contact with participants. But some research questions may be better illustrated or even mostly answered by analysis of existing documents.

This ‘desk-based’ research often doesn’t seem as fun, but can provide a very important wider context that you can’t capture even with direct contact with many relevant participants. But policy analysis is an often overlooked source of important contextual data, especially for social science and societal issues. Now, this may sound boring – who wants to wade through a whole lot of dry government or institutional policy? But not only is there usually a long historical archive of this data available, it can be invaluable for grounding the experiences of respondents in wider context.

Usually, interesting social research questions are (or should be) concerns that are addressed (perhaps inadequately) in existing policy and debate. Since social research tends to focus on problems in society, or with the behaviour or life experiences of groups or individuals, participants in qualitative research will often feel their issues should be addressed by the policy of local or national government, or a relevant institution. Remember that large companies and agencies may have their own internal policy that can be relevant, if you can get access to it.

Policy discussed at local, state or national level is probably easy to get access to in public record. But it may also be interesting to look at the debate when policy was discussed, to see what issues where controversial and how they were addressed. These should also be available from national archives such as Hansard (in the UK) or the House of the Clark in the USA. You can also do comparisons of policy across countries to get an international perspective, or try to explain differences of policy in certain cultures.

Try to also consider not just officially adopted policy, but proposed policy and reports or proposals from lobbying or special interest groups. It’s often a good way to get valuable data and quotes from different forces acting to change policy in your topic area.

But there is also a lot of power in integrating your policy and document analysis with original research. You can cross reference topics coming out of participant interviews, and see if they are reflected in policy document. Discourse analysis, and using keyword searches to look for common terms across all your sources can be revealing.

Looking at how the media represents these issues and the debates over policy can also be interesting. Make sure that you record which outlet an article comes from, as this can be a useful way to compare different representations of events from media groups with their own particular bias or interpretation.

There are of course many different to policy analysis that you can take, including quantitative and mixed-method epidemiologies. While general interpretive qualitative analysis can be revealing, consider also also discourse and meta-systhesis . There’s a short overview video to policy document analysis the from the Manchester Methods Institute here . The following chapter by Ritchie and Spencer is also a good introduction, and for a full textbook try Narrative Policy Analysis: Theory and Practice by Emery Roe (thanks to Dr Chenail for the suggestion!).

Qualitative software like Quirkos can help bring all this data from different sources into one project, allowing you to create a common (or separate) coding framework for your analysis. In Quirkos you can use the source properties to define where a piece of data comes from, and then run queries across all types of source, or just a particular type. While any CAQDAS or QDA software will help you manage document analysis, Quirkos is quick to learn and so lets you focus on your data. You can download a free trial here, and student licences are just US$65 .

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• Knowledge Base
• Dissertation

How to Write a Dissertation Proposal | A Step-by-Step Guide

Published on 14 February 2020 by Jack Caulfield . Revised on 11 November 2022.

A dissertation proposal describes the research you want to do: what it’s about, how you’ll conduct it, and why it’s worthwhile. You will probably have to write a proposal before starting your dissertation as an undergraduate or postgraduate student.

A dissertation proposal should generally include:

• An introduction to your topic and aims
• A literature review  of the current state of knowledge
• An outline of your proposed methodology
• A discussion of the possible implications of the research
• A bibliography  of relevant sources

Dissertation proposals vary a lot in terms of length and structure, so make sure to follow any guidelines given to you by your institution, and check with your supervisor when you’re unsure.

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Table of contents

Step 1: coming up with an idea, step 2: presenting your idea in the introduction, step 3: exploring related research in the literature review, step 4: describing your methodology, step 5: outlining the potential implications of your research, step 6: creating a reference list or bibliography.

Before writing your proposal, it’s important to come up with a strong idea for your dissertation.

Find an area of your field that interests you and do some preliminary reading in that area. What are the key concerns of other researchers? What do they suggest as areas for further research, and what strikes you personally as an interesting gap in the field?

Once you have an idea, consider how to narrow it down and the best way to frame it. Don’t be too ambitious or too vague – a dissertation topic needs to be specific enough to be feasible. Move from a broad field of interest to a specific niche:

• Russian literature 19th century Russian literature The novels of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky
• Social media Mental health effects of social media Influence of social media on young adults suffering from anxiety

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Like most academic texts, a dissertation proposal begins with an introduction . This is where you introduce the topic of your research, provide some background, and most importantly, present your aim , objectives and research question(s) .

Try to dive straight into your chosen topic: What’s at stake in your research? Why is it interesting? Don’t spend too long on generalisations or grand statements:

• Social media is the most important technological trend of the 21st century. It has changed the world and influences our lives every day.
• Psychologists generally agree that the ubiquity of social media in the lives of young adults today has a profound impact on their mental health. However, the exact nature of this impact needs further investigation.

Once your area of research is clear, you can present more background and context. What does the reader need to know to understand your proposed questions? What’s the current state of research on this topic, and what will your dissertation contribute to the field?

If you’re including a literature review, you don’t need to go into too much detail at this point, but give the reader a general sense of the debates that you’re intervening in.

This leads you into the most important part of the introduction: your aim, objectives and research question(s) . These should be clearly identifiable and stand out from the text – for example, you could present them using bullet points or bold font.

Make sure that your research questions are specific and workable – something you can reasonably answer within the scope of your dissertation. Avoid being too broad or having too many different questions. Remember that your goal in a dissertation proposal is to convince the reader that your research is valuable and feasible:

• Does social media harm mental health?
• What is the impact of daily social media use on 18– to 25–year–olds suffering from general anxiety disorder?

Now that your topic is clear, it’s time to explore existing research covering similar ideas. This is important because it shows you what is missing from other research in the field and ensures that you’re not asking a question someone else has already answered.

You’ve probably already done some preliminary reading, but now that your topic is more clearly defined, you need to thoroughly analyse and evaluate the most relevant sources in your literature review .

Here you should summarise the findings of other researchers and comment on gaps and problems in their studies. There may be a lot of research to cover, so make effective use of paraphrasing to write concisely:

• Smith and Prakash state that ‘our results indicate a 25% decrease in the incidence of mechanical failure after the new formula was applied’.
• Smith and Prakash’s formula reduced mechanical failures by 25%.

The point is to identify findings and theories that will influence your own research, but also to highlight gaps and limitations in previous research which your dissertation can address:

• Subsequent research has failed to replicate this result, however, suggesting a flaw in Smith and Prakash’s methods. It is likely that the failure resulted from…

Next, you’ll describe your proposed methodology : the specific things you hope to do, the structure of your research and the methods that you will use to gather and analyse data.

You should get quite specific in this section – you need to convince your supervisor that you’ve thought through your approach to the research and can realistically carry it out. This section will look quite different, and vary in length, depending on your field of study.

You may be engaged in more empirical research, focusing on data collection and discovering new information, or more theoretical research, attempting to develop a new conceptual model or add nuance to an existing one.

Dissertation research often involves both, but the content of your methodology section will vary according to how important each approach is to your dissertation.

Empirical research

Empirical research involves collecting new data and analysing it in order to answer your research questions. It can be quantitative (focused on numbers), qualitative (focused on words and meanings), or a combination of both.

With empirical research, it’s important to describe in detail how you plan to collect your data:

• Will you use surveys ? A lab experiment ? Interviews?
• What variables will you measure?
• How will you select a representative sample ?
• If other people will participate in your research, what measures will you take to ensure they are treated ethically?
• What tools (conceptual and physical) will you use, and why?

It’s appropriate to cite other research here. When you need to justify your choice of a particular research method or tool, for example, you can cite a text describing the advantages and appropriate usage of that method.

Don’t overdo this, though; you don’t need to reiterate the whole theoretical literature, just what’s relevant to the choices you have made.

Moreover, your research will necessarily involve analysing the data after you have collected it. Though you don’t know yet what the data will look like, it’s important to know what you’re looking for and indicate what methods (e.g. statistical tests , thematic analysis ) you will use.

Theoretical research

You can also do theoretical research that doesn’t involve original data collection. In this case, your methodology section will focus more on the theory you plan to work with in your dissertation: relevant conceptual models and the approach you intend to take.

For example, a literary analysis dissertation rarely involves collecting new data, but it’s still necessary to explain the theoretical approach that will be taken to the text(s) under discussion, as well as which parts of the text(s) you will focus on:

• This dissertation will utilise Foucault’s theory of panopticism to explore the theme of surveillance in Orwell’s 1984 and Kafka’s The Trial…

Here, you may refer to the same theorists you have already discussed in the literature review. In this case, the emphasis is placed on how you plan to use their contributions in your own research.

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You’ll usually conclude your dissertation proposal with a section discussing what you expect your research to achieve.

You obviously can’t be too sure: you don’t know yet what your results and conclusions will be. Instead, you should describe the projected implications and contribution to knowledge of your dissertation.

First, consider the potential implications of your research. Will you:

• Develop or test a theory?
• Provide new information to governments or businesses?
• Challenge a commonly held belief?
• Suggest an improvement to a specific process?

Describe the intended result of your research and the theoretical or practical impact it will have:

Finally, it’s sensible to conclude by briefly restating the contribution to knowledge you hope to make: the specific question(s) you hope to answer and the gap the answer(s) will fill in existing knowledge:

Like any academic text, it’s important that your dissertation proposal effectively references all the sources you have used. You need to include a properly formatted reference list or bibliography at the end of your proposal.

Different institutions recommend different styles of referencing – commonly used styles include Harvard , Vancouver , APA , or MHRA . If your department does not have specific requirements, choose a style and apply it consistently.

A reference list includes only the sources that you cited in your proposal. A bibliography is slightly different: it can include every source you consulted in preparing the proposal, even if you didn’t mention it in the text. In the case of a dissertation proposal, a bibliography may also list relevant sources that you haven’t yet read, but that you intend to use during the research itself.

Check with your supervisor what type of bibliography or reference list you should include.

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Dissertations 2: structure: thematic.

In the humanities, a thematic dissertation is often structured like a long essay. It can contain: 

Title page 

Abstract 

Table of contents 

Introduction  

Literature review (which can be included in the introduction rather than as a separate chapter. Check with your supervisor if you are unsure). 

Theme 1 

Theme 2 

Theme 3 

Conclusion 

Bibliography 

Appendices 

Abstracts are used by other researchers to establish the relevance of the study to their own work. Therefore, they should contain the what, why, who, where and how of your project.  

They are typically between 250 – 300 words long, offer a summary of the main findings and present the conclusions, so you should attempt to write an abstract (if requested), after you have finished writing the dissertation.  

A typical abstract summarises: 

What the study aimed to achieve  

The methodology used 

Why the research was conducted 

Why the research is important 

Who/what was researched 

Table of Contents

The table of contents should list all the items included in your dissertation.  

It is a good idea to use the electronic table of contents feature in Word to automatically link it to your chapter headings and page numbers. Attempting to manually create a table of contents means that you will have to adjust your page numbers every time you edit your work before submission, which may waste valuable time!  

This useful  video will walk you through the formatting of longer documents using the electronic table of contents feature. 

Introduction

The introduction explains the how, what, where, when, why and who of the research. It introduces the reader to your dissertation and should act as a clear guide as to what it will cover.  

The introduction may include the following content: 

Introduce the topic of the dissertation

• State why the topic is of interest 
• Give background information on the subject. 
• Refer to the main debates in the field

Identify the scope of your research 

• Highlight what hasn't already been said by the literature  
• Demonstrate what you seek to investigate, and why 
• Present the aim of the dissertation. 
• Mention your research question or hypothesis 

Indicate your approach  

• Introduce your main argument (especially if you have a research question, rather than hypothesis). 
• Mention your methods/research design. 
• Outline the dissertation structure (introduce the main points that you will discuss in the order they will be presented). 

Normally, the introduction is roughly 10% of a dissertation word count. 

Literature Review

The term “literature” in “literature review” comprises scholarly articles, books, and other sources (e.g. reports) relevant to a particular issue, area of research or theory. In a dissertation, the literature review illustrates what the literature already says on your research subject, providing summary and synthesis of such literature.  

It is generally structured by topic, starting from general background and concepts, and then addressing what can be found - and cannot be found - on the specific focus of your dissertation. Indeed, the literature review should identify gaps in the literature, that your research aims to fill. This requires you to engage critically with the literature, not merely reproduce the critical understanding of others.  

In sum, literature reviews should demonstrate how your research question can be located in a wider field of inquiry. Therefore, a literature review needs to address the connections between your work and the work of others by highlighting links between them. In doing so, you will demonstrate the foundations of your project and show how you are taking the line of inquiry forwards.  

By the end of your literature review, your reader should be able to see: 

The gap in knowledge and understanding which you say exists in the field. 

How your research question will work within that gap. 

The work other researchers have carried out and the issues debated in the field. 

That you have a good understanding of the field and that you are critically engaged with the debates (Burnett, 2009). 

For more detailed guidance on how to write literature reviews, check out the Literature Review Guide. 

Theme Chapters

In a thematic structure, the core chapters present analysis and discussion of different themes relevant to answer the research question and support the overall argument of the dissertation. The chapters will include analysis of texts/ research material. They can explore and connect academic theories/research to develop an argument. Stella Cottrell offers some good guidance on how to structure your theme chapters. Each chapter should have the following elements (Cottrell, 2014, p183):

Theme: What is the theme of this chapter? Sequence your themes logically (e.g. from general to specific).  

Argument: What argument does this chapter present?  

Material: What material you will be using for this chapter? 

Clustering: What are the main points you want to make? Deal with one point at a time, and don't jum around? Dedicate your points to sub-headings and paragraphs.  

Sequence: In what order are you going to present the points you want to make in this chapter? Draw an outline of the chapter before starting writing it.  

Introduction and Conclusion: Each chapter should have a short introduction and conclusion. 

The conclusion is the final chapter of your dissertation. It should flow logically from the previously presented text; therefore, you should avoid introducing new ideas, new data, or a new direction.  

Ideally, the conclusion should leave the reader with a clear understanding of the discovery or argument you have advanced.  

This can be done by: 

Summarising and synthesising your main findings and how they relate to your research question or hypotheses  

Demonstrating the relevance and importance of your work in the wider context of your field. For example, what recommendations would you make for future research? What do we know now that we didn’t know before? 

Link your conclusion to your introduction as both frame your dissertation. 

A conclusion is roughly five to ten percent of the word count of the dissertation. 

Avoid excessive detail. Decide what your reader needs to know. 

Don’t introduce any new information such as theories, data or ideas.  

Sum up the main points of your research.  

Bibliography

While writing your dissertation, you would have referred to the works and research of many different authors and editors in your field of study. These works should be acknowledged in the bibliography where you will list writers alphabetically by surname. 

For example: 

Poloian, L.R. (2013).  Retailing principles: global, multichannel, and managerial viewpoints.  New York: Fairchild.  Biggs, J. and Tang, C. (2011).  Teaching for quality learning at university . Maidenhead: Open University Press.  Ramsay, P., Maier, P. and Price, G. (2010).  Study skills for business and management students . Harlow: Longman. 

Unless otherwise specified by your module leader, the University uses the Harvard (author-date) style of citing and referencing. For more guidance and support on how to reference effectively check out the  Referencing Guide . You can also  book an appointment  with an Academic Engagement Librarian for extra help with referencing. 

While the main results of your study should be placed in the body of your dissertation, any extra information can be placed in the appendices chapter. This supplementary information, for instance, can consist of graphs, charts, or tables that demonstrate less significant results or interview transcripts that would disrupt the flow of the main text if they were included within it.  

You can create one long appendix section or divide it into smaller sections to make it easier to navigate. For example, you might want to have an appendix for images, an appendix for transcripts, and an appendix for graphs. Each appendix (each graph or chart, etc.) should have its own number and title. Further, the sources for all appendices should be acknowledged through referencing and listed in the bibliography. 

Don’t forget to mention each appendix at least once during your dissertation! This can be done using brackets in the following way: (see appendix 1). 

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News Roundup Spring 2024

CEGE Spring Graduation Celebration and Order of the Engineer

Forty-seven graduates of the undergraduate and grad student programs (pictured above) in the Department of Civil, Environmental, and Geo- Engineering took part in the Order of the Engineer on graduation day. Distinguished Speakers at this departmental event included Katrina Kessler (MS EnvE 2021), Commissioner of the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency, and student Brian Balquist. Following this event, students participated in the college-wide Commencement Ceremony at 3M Arena at Mariucci. 

UNIVERSITY & DEPARTMENT

The University of Minnesota’s Crookston, Duluth, and Rochester campuses have been awarded the Carnegie Elective Classification for Community Engagement, joining the Twin Cities (2006, 2015) and Morris campuses (2015), and making the U of M the country’s first and only university system at which every individual campus has received this selective designation. Only 368 from nearly 4,000 qualifying U.S. universities and colleges have been granted this designation.

CEGE contributed strongly to the College of Science and Engineering’s efforts toward sustainability research. CEGE researchers are bringing in over $35 million in funded research to study carbon mineralization, nature and urban areas, circularity of water resources, and global snowfall patterns. This news was highlighted in the Fall 2023 issue of  Inventing Tomorrow  (pages 10-11). https://issuu.com/inventingtomorrow/docs/fall_2023_inventing_tomorrow-web

CEGE’s new program for a one-year master’s degree in structural engineering is now accepting applicants for Fall 2024. We owe a big thanks to DAN MURPHY and LAURA AMUNDSON for their volunteer work to help curate the program with Professor JIA-LIANG LE and EBRAHIM SHEMSHADIAN, the program director. Potential students and companies interested in hosting a summer intern can contact Ebrahim Shemshadian ( [email protected] ).

BERNIE BULLERT , CEGE benefactor and MN Water Research Fund founder, was profiled on the website of the University of Minnesota Foundation (UMF). There you can read more about his mission to share clean water technologies with smaller communities in Minnesota. Many have joined Bullert in this mission. MWRF Recognizes their Generous 2024 Partners. Gold Partners: Bernie Bullert, Hawkins, Inc., Minnesota Department of Health, Minnesota Pollution Control Agency, and SL-serco. Silver Partners: ISG, Karl and Pam Streed, Kasco, Kelly Lange-Haider and Mark Haider, ME Simpson, Naeem Qureshi, Dr. Paul H. Boening, TKDA, and Waterous. Bronze Partners: Bruce R. Bullert; Brenda Lenz, Ph.D., APRN FNP-C, CNE; CDM Smith; Central States Water Environment Association (CSWEA MN); Heidi and Steve Hamilton; Jim “Bulldog” Sadler; Lisa and Del Cerney; Magney Construction; Sambatek; Shannon and John Wolkerstorfer; Stantec; and Tenon Systems.

After retiring from Baker-Tilly,  NICK DRAGISICH  (BCE 1977) has taken on a new role: City Council member in Lake Elmo, Minnesota. After earning his BCE from the University of Minnesota, Dragisich earned a master’s degree in business administration from the University of St. Thomas. Dragisich retired in May from his position as managing director at Baker Tilly, where he had previously served as firm director. Prior to that, he served as assistant city manager in Spokane, Washington, was the city administrator and city engineer in Virginia, Minnesota, and was mayor of Chisholm, Minnesota—all adding up to more than 40 years of experience in local government. Dragisich was selected by a unanimous vote. His current term expires in December 2024.

PAUL F. GNIRK  (Ph.D. 1966) passed away January 29, 2024, at the age of 86. A memorial service was held Saturday, February 24, at the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology (SDSM&T), where he started and ended his teaching career, though he had many other positions, professional and voluntary. In 2018 Paul was inducted into the SDSM&T Hardrocker Hall of Fame, and in 2022, he was inducted into the South Dakota Hall of Fame, joining his mother Adeline S. Gnirk, who had been inducted in 1987 for her work authoring nine books on the history of south central South Dakota.

ROGER M. HILL  (BCE 1957) passed away on January 13, 2024, at the age of 90. His daughter, Kelly Robinson, wrote to CEGE that Roger was “a dedicated Gopher fan until the end, and we enjoyed many football games together in recent years. Thank you for everything.”

KAUSER JAHAN  (Ph.D. 1993, advised by Walter Maier), PE, is now a civil and environmental engineering professor and department head at Henry M. Rowan College of Engineering. Jahan was awarded a 3-year (2022- 2025), $500,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA). The grant supports her project, “WaterWorks: Developing the New Generation of Workforce for Water/Wastewater Utilities,” for the development of educational tools that will expose and prepare today’s students for careers in water and wastewater utilities.

SAURA JOST  (BCE 2010, advised by Timothy LaPara) was elected to the St. Paul City Council for Ward 3. She is part of the historic group of women that make up the nation’s first all-female city council in a large city.

The 2024 ASCE Western Great Lakes Student Symposium combines several competitions for students involved in ASCE. CEGE sent a large contingent of competitors to Chicago. Each of the competition groups won awards: Ethics Paper 1st place Hans Lagerquist; Sustainable Solutions team 1st place overall in (qualifying them for the National competition in Utah in June); GeoWall 2nd place overall; Men’s Sprint for Concrete Canoe with rowers Sakthi Sundaram Saravanan and Owen McDonald 2nd place; Product Prototype for Concrete Canoe 2nd place; Steel Bridge (200 lb bridge weight) 2nd place in lightness; Scavenger Hunt 3rd place; and Aesthetics and Structural Efficiency for Steel Bridge 4th place.

Students competing on the Minnesota Environmental Engineers, Scientists, and Enthusiasts (MEESE) team earned second place in the Conference on the Environment undergraduate student design competition in November 2023. Erin Surdo is the MEESE Faculty Adviser. Pictured are NIKO DESHPANDE, ANNA RETTLER, and SYDNEY OLSON.

The CEGE CLASS OF 2023 raised money to help reduce the financial barrier for fellow students taking the Fundamentals of Engineering exam, a cost of $175 per test taker. As a result of this gift, they were able to make the exam more affordable for 15 current CEGE seniors. CEGE students who take the FE exam pass the first time at a rate well above national averages, demonstrating that CEGE does a great job of teaching engineering fundamentals. In 2023, 46 of 50 students passed the challenging exam on the first try.

This winter break, four CEGE students joined 10 other students from the College of Science and Engineering for the global seminar, Design for Life: Water in Tanzania. The students visited numerous sites in Tanzania, collected water source samples, designed rural water systems, and went on safari. Read the trip blog: http://globalblogs.cse.umn.edu/search/label/Tanzania%202024

Undergraduate Honor Student  MALIK KHADAR  (advised by Dr. Paul Capel) received honorable mention for the Computing Research Association (CRA) Outstanding Undergraduate Research Award for undergraduate students who show outstanding research potential in an area of computing research.

GRADUATE STUDENTS

AKASH BHAT  (advised by William Arnold) presented his Ph.D. defense on Friday, October 27, 2023. Bhat’s thesis is “Photolysis of fluorochemicals: Tracking fluorine, use of UV-LEDs, and computational insights.” Bhat’s work investigating the degradation of fluorinated compounds will assist in the future design of fluorinated chemicals such that persistent and/or toxic byproducts are not formed in the environment.

ETHAN BOTMEN  (advised by Bill Arnold) completed his Master of Science Final Exam February 28, 2024. His research topic was Degradation of Fluorinated Compounds by Nucleophilic Attack of Organo-fluorine Functional Groups.

XIATING CHEN , Ph.D. Candidate in Water Resources Engineering at the Saint Anthony Falls Laboratory is the recipient of the 2023 Nels Nelson Memorial Fellowship Award. Chen (advised by Xue Feng) is researching eco-hydrological functions of urban trees and other green infrastructure at both the local and watershed scale, through combined field observations and modeling approaches.

ALICE PRATES BISSO DAMBROZ  has been a Visiting Student Researcher at the University of Minnesota since last August, on a Doctoral Dissertation Research Award from Fulbright. Her CEGE advisor is Dr. Paul Capel. Dambroz is a fourth year Ph.D. student in Soil Science at Universidade Federal de Santa Maria in Brazil, where she studies with her adviser Jean Minella. Her research focuses on the hydrological monitoring of a small agricultural watershed in Southern Brazil, which is located on a transition area between volcanic and sedimentary rocks. Its topography, shallow soils, and land use make it prone to runoff and erosion processes.

Yielding to people in crosswalks should be a very pedestrian topic. Yet graduate student researchers  TIANYI LI, JOSHUA KLAVINS, TE XU, NIAZ MAHMUD ZAFRI  (Dept.of Urban and Regional Planning at Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology), and Professor Raphael Stern found that drivers often do not yield to pedestrians, but they are influenced by the markings around a crosswalk. Their work was picked up by the  Minnesota Reformer.

TIANYI LI  (Ph.D. student advised by Raphael Stern) also won the Dwight David Eisenhower Transportation (DDET) Fellowship for the third time! Li (center) and Stern (right) are pictured at the Federal Highway Administration with Latoya Jones, the program manager for the DDET Fellowship.

The Three Minute Thesis Contest and the Minnesota Nice trophy has become an annual tradition in CEGE. 2023’s winner was  EHSANUR RAHMAN , a Ph.D. student advised by Boya Xiong.

GUANJU (WILLIAM) WEI , a Ph.D. student advised by Judy Yang, is the recipient of the 2023 Heinz G. Stefan Fellowship. He presented his research entitled Microfluidic Investigation of the Biofilm Growth under Dynamic Fluid Environments and received his award at the St. Anthony Falls Research Laboratory April 9. The results of Wei's research can be used in industrial, medical, and scientific fields to control biofilm growth.

BILL ARNOLD  stars in an award-winning video about prairie potholes. The Prairie Potholes Project film was made with the University of Delaware and highlights Arnold’s NSF research. The official winners of the 2024 Environmental Communications Awards Competition Grand Prize are Jon Cox and Ben Hemmings who produced and directed the film. Graduate student Marcia Pacheco (CFANS/LAAS) and Bill Arnold are the on-screen stars.

Four faculty from CEGE join the Center for Transportation Studies Faculty and Research Scholars for FY24–25:  SEONGJIN CHOI, KETSON ROBERTO MAXIMIANO DOS SANTOS, PEDRAM MORTAZAVI,  and  BENJAMIN WORSFOLD . CTS Scholars are drawn from diverse fields including engineering, planning, computer science, environmental studies, and public policy.

XUE FENG  is coauthor on an article in  Nature Reviews Earth and Environment . The authors evaluate global plant responses to changing rainfall regimes that are now characterized by fewer and larger rainfall events. A news release written at Univ. of Maryland can be found here: https://webhost.essic. umd.edu/april-showers-bring-mayflowers- but-with-drizzles-or-downpours/ A long-running series of U of M research projects aimed at improving stormwater quality are beginning to see practical application by stormwater specialists from the Twin Cities metro area and beyond. JOHN GULLIVER has been studying best practices for stormwater management for about 16 years. Lately, he has focused specifically on mitigating phosphorous contamination. His research was highlighted by the Center for Transportation Studies.

JIAQI LI, BILL ARNOLD,  and  RAYMOND HOZALSKI  published a paper on N-nitrosodimethylamine (NDMA) precursors in Minnesota rivers. “Animal Feedlots and Domestic Wastewater Discharges are Likely Sources of N-Nitrosodimethylamine (NDMA) Precursors in Midwestern Watersheds,” Environmental Science and Technology (January 2024) doi: 10.1021/acs. est.3c09251

ALIREZA KHANI  contributed to MnDOT research on Optimizing Charging Infrastructure for Electric Trucks. Electric options for medium- and heavy-duty electric trucks (e-trucks) are still largely in development. These trucks account for a substantial percentage of transportation greenhouse gas emissions. They have greater power needs and different charging needs than personal EVs. Proactively planning for e-truck charging stations will support MnDOT in helping to achieve the state’s greenhouse gas reduction goals. This research was featured in the webinar “Electrification of the Freight System in Minnesota,” hosted by the University of Minnesota’s Center for Transportation Studies. A recording of the event is now available online.

MICHAEL LEVIN  has developed a unique course for CEGE students on Air Transportation Systems. It is the only class at UMN studying air transportation systems from an infrastructure design and management perspective. Spring 2024 saw the third offering of this course, which is offered for juniors, seniors, and graduate students.

Research Professor  SOFIA (SONIA) MOGILEVSKAYA  has been developing international connections. She visited the University of Seville, Spain, November 13–26, 2023, where she taught a short course titled “Fundamentals of Homogenization in Composites.” She also met with the graduate students to discuss collaborative research with Prof. Vladislav Mantic, from the Group of Continuum Mechanics and Structural Analysis at the University of Seville. Her visit was a part of planned activities within the DIAGONAL Consortium funded by the European Commission. CEGE UMN is a partner organization within DIAGONAL, represented by CEGE professors Mogilevskaya and Joseph Labuz. Mantic will visit CEGE summer 2024 to follow up on research developments and discuss plans for future collaboration and organization of short-term exchange visits for the graduate students from each institution. 

DAVID NEWCOMB  passed away in March. He was a professor in CEGE from 1989–99 in the area of pavement engineering. Newcomb led the research program on asphalt materials characterization. He was the technical director of Mn/ROAD pavement research facility, and he started an enduring collaboration with MnDOT that continues today. In 2000, he moved from Minnesota to become vice-president for Research and Technology at the National Asphalt Pavement Association. Later he moved to his native Texas, where he was appointed to the division head of Materials and Pavement at the Texas A&M Transportation Institute, a position from which he recently retired. He will be greatly missed.

PAIGE NOVAK  won Minnesota ASCE’s 2023 Distinguished Engineer of the Year Award for her contributions to society through her engineering achievements and professional experiences.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) announced ten inaugural (NSF) Regional Innovation Engines awards, with a potential $1.6 billion investment nationally over the next decade. Great Lakes ReNEW is led by the Chicago-based water innovation hub,  Current,  and includes a team from the University of Minnesota, including PAIGE NOVAK. Current will receive $15 mil for the first two years, and up to $160 million over ten years to develop and grow a water-focused innovation engine in the Great Lakes region. The project’s ambitious plan is to create a decarbonized circular “blue economy” to leverage the region’s extraordinary water resources to transform the upper Midwest—Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, and Wisconsin. Brewing one pint of beer generates seven pints of wastewater, on average. So what can you do with that wastewater?  PAIGE NOVAK  and her team are exploring the possibilities of capturing pollutants in wastewater and using bacteria to transform them into energy.

BOYA XIONG  has been selected as a recipient of the 2024 40 Under 40 Recognition Program by the American Academy of Environmental Engineers and Scientists. The award was presented at the 2024 AAEES Awards Ceremony, April 11, 2024, at the historic Howard University in Washington, D.C. 

JUDY Q. YANG  received a McKnight Land-Grant Professorship Award. This two-year award recognizes promising assistant professors and is intended to advance the careers of individuals who have the potential to make significant contributions to their departments and their scholarly fields. 

Professor Emeritus CHARLES FAIRHURST , his son CHARLES EDWARD FAIRHURST , and his daughter MARGARET FAIRHURST DURENBERGER were on campus recently to present Department Head Paige Novak with a check for $25,000 for the Charles Fairhurst Fellowship in Earth Resources Engineering in support of graduate students studying geomechanics. The life of Charles Fairhurst through a discussion with his children is featured on the Engineering and Technology History Wiki at https://ethw.org/Oral-History:Charles_Fairhurst#00:00:14_INTRODUCTION

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