The Official Journal of the State Politics and Policy
Organized Section of the American Political Science Association

Practical Researcher Section Policy Statement

Mission Statement
The primary purpose of State Politics and Policy Quarterly is to foster and promote the rigorous, theoretically driven and methodologically sound study of political behavior and policy at the state level. The central mission of "The Practical Researcher" is to support this objective by publishing material that addresses the practical issues of conducting research in this area. As such the section is service-oriented and seeks to publicize and record the contents and locations of publicly available data resources, supply a vehicle for addressing methodological issues central to state politics and policy research, provide a forum to assess the applied impact of research produced by the subdiscipline, and to provide an outlet to address other topics related to practical research interests.

Basically, the aim is to provide an official outlet for the shared wisdom of the state politics and policy sub-field. To provide a more specific set of ideas on the sorts of things were looking for, here are some example topics of manuscripts actually submitted to The Practical Researcher:

• An article presenting a new set of state-level public opinion measures for specific policy Issues.
• An essay on the importance of data archiving, and describing a specific data archive and how to both submit and retrieve data from it.
• An essay on how to get data from a state agency when an initial request is denied.

Submissions
The Practical Researcher is refereed, although the review process is slightly different from a regular journal article. Normally, two reviews are solicited, and referees are asked to assess manuscripts on their practical contribution to supporting state-level politics and policy research, rather than their direct contribution to the knowledge produced by the field. Articles should not be longer than 15 pages, including tables and references. To submit an article send three copies, two with all identifying references removed, and a copy on floppy disk in standard word processor format (Word or WordPerfect is preferred). All should be sent to:

Don Haider-Markel , Assoc. Ed.
State Politics and Policy Quarterly
Dept. of Political Science
University of Kansas
1541 Lilac Lane, 504 Blake Hall
Lawrence, KS 66044-3177

If you have questions or want to discuss an article idea, contact Don Haider-Markel, prex@ku.edu.

Last updated: February 10, 2009