Why Can't We Resolve the Research Issue in Public Administration?

Author(s): Howard E. McCurdy and Robert E. Cleary

Source: Public Administration Review , Jan. - Feb., 1984, Vol. 44, No. 1 (Jan. - Feb.,
1984), pp. 49-55
Published by: Wiley on behalf of the American Society for Public Administration

Stable URL: http://www.jstor.com/stable/975661

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 49

Why Can't We Resolve

the Research Issue in
Public Administration?
Howard E. McCurdy, The American University
Robert E. Cleary, The American University

Nearly 50 years ago, in a now classic issue of the
Public Administration Review, Robert Hutchins and
William Mosher debated whether schools should be
established to train people in public administration.
Hutchins, then president of the University of Chicago,
took a negative view. He argued that public administra-
tion is too variable a field to lend itself to systematic ex-
ploration. Mosher, then dean of the Maxwell School at
Syracuse University, argued in the affirmative. His
words are worth recalling:
In view of the large body of knowledge now available ... it is possible
for one to equip himself for an administrative career in much the same
way as physicians and engineers are equipped for the practice of their
professions. '
* Almost 50 years after the Robert Hutchins-William Mosher
debate about the contribution of research to knowledge about the
field, research methodology in public administration remains weak
and fragmented. Considerable uncertainty exists regarding the
criteria that public administration research should meet, and this
uncertainty is being transmitted to doctoral students entering the
field.
Data from doctoral dissertation research suggests that the lack
of methodological progress is due to inadequate standards among
leading university programs in public administration as well as to
the nature of the field itself. Public administration has not come to
grips with basic questions of research that should be settled in a
mature field of study.

Given the state of public administration in the 1930s,

and fragmented.6 A substantial portion of the 1982
Mosher seems to have been overreaching. His argument
Conference of the National Association of Schools of
was more in the nature of a promise, for scholars
Public Affairs and Administration (NASPAA) was
searching to find Mosher's "large body of knowledge"
devoted to an analysis of the feeble state of research in
were confronted by the reality that much of it was miss-
public administration.7
ing. In every decade following the appearance of the
Various explanations, most of them interrelated, have
Hutchins-Mosher articles in 1938, references to the need
been offered for these difficulties. Because of its orien-
for more research in the field regularly reappear.
tation toward applications, we are told, public admin-
In 1945 for example, Herbert Simon declared, "What
istration does not lend itself to systematic inquiry and
is needed is empirical research and experimentation to
theory testing. Many leading programs in public admin-
determine the relative desirability of alternative admin-
istration do not have as strong a commitment to
istrative arrangements."' Surveying the field in 1947,
research as they could, compared to leading programs in
Robert Dahl concluded that "we are a long way from a
other disciplines. The field, consequently, must often
science of public administration."' During the 1950s,
rely upon scientific findings from other areas. But
Frederick Mosher told readers of the Public Admin-
methods of inquiry developed in other disciplines may
istration Review that "research in public administration
not be as appropriate to the needs of public administra-
. . . has fallen short of its potential effectiveness."4
tion as its own techniques like the case study. The case
Charles Liebman, looking back on the Hutchins-
study, however, is generally viewed as having limited
Mosher debate from the 1960s, asked the question
validity. 8
"how can we teach what we don't know?"'5
Part of the failure of public administration to develop
As the articles behind these quotations reveal,
a solid research base is related to that stage of an aca-
scholars in public administration have continued to
demic career when a researcher is first trained in the
have a difficult time coming to grips with the nature of
research process in a systematic way-the doctoral pro-
research and its role in the field. The issue is far from
gram. The role of doctoral programs in public admin-
settled. A Public Management Research Directory pub-
istration is clearly unsettled. While some faculty see the
lished in 1981 82 portrays research in the field as weak

Howard E. McCurdy teaches the doctoral seminar for public admin-

The authors would like to acknowledge the assistance of Robert Biller
of the University of Southern California for providing us with a
forum to first present our findings, and that of David Koehler of The
American University for his advice and criticism.
istration students at The American University.
Robert E. Cleary is dean of the College of Public and International
Affairs at The American University.

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 50 PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION
doctorate as a research degree, others prefer to orient it
toward professional practice. In either case, few pro-
grams organize doctoral research projects in such a way
as to help new scholars develop research standards that
result in significant contributions to the field of study.
This paper presents data on the type of doctoral
research done in public administration. This allows us
to raise questions and test propositions about the train-
ing of future researchers.
Of the 142 projects we studied, less than
half tested a theory or a causal statement,
the criteria for impact. Of those that had im-
pact, only 21 were designed in a way that
would allow the reader to have much con-
fidence in the findings.
Much more is involved here than just dissertation
research, of course. Doctoral studies are a major means
by which new scholars are schooled in the research
habits of their mentors. To the extent that the research
habits of the mentors are not scientifically based, or are
otherwise weak, or in controversy, this is what doctoral
students will absorb. In this sense, data on doctoral
research permits us to test some of the explanations
about the problematic state of research in the field as a
whole. This data suggests, overall, that public admin-
istration has yet to come to terms with basic research
issues that should be settled in a mature field of study.
Data Base
The 1981 edition of Dissertation Abstracts Inter-
national describes 142 doctoral research projects cate-
gorized under the heading of public administration. The
projects were carried out in the areas of policy analysis
(41, or 29 percent), administrative theory (36, or 25 per-
cent), comparative public administration (21, or 15 per-
cent), organization theory (14, or 10 percent), and
organization development and human resource manage-
ment (12, or 8 percent), with 13 percent in other areas.
The 142 projects were written under the direction of
scholars at 57 different U.S. universities. The number of
projects per university ranges from one to 16, with the
median being three. The data base for our analysis con-
sists of the abstracts for all 142 projects.9
Criteria
Few of these doctoral projects meet the criteria that
conventionally define careful, systematic study in the
social sciences.'0 The variegated quality of the projects
suggests that there is not much agreement upon the
research criteria that carefully constructed studies of
public administration should meet. Public administra-
tion does not appear to possess widely agreed-upon
research criteria against which to measure the quality of
these doctoral research projects.
In search of established criteria, we identified the
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REVIEW
main problems that the authors of the projects encoun-
tered in trying to make a contribution to the field of
study. These involved matters of purpose, validity, im-
pact on the field, and importance of the topic studied.
We used these particulars as criteria to test the capabil-
ity of the projects to advance the knowledge base sup-
porting the field of public administration. The criteria
are defined below:
Purpose: Did the study actually have a research pur-
pose; that is, did the writer set out to conduct basic
research and report on the findings?
Validity: Did the author set up the study in such a way
so a reader could have confidence in the findings and in-
fer their applicability to similar situations? This cri-
terion involves internal and external validity, and is
essentially a problem of research design. "I A study that
was carefully designed-it might use experimental or
quasi-experimental methods or statistical techniques-
generally met this test. Case studies generally did not.
Impact': The Testing of Theory: Did the research ex-
plicitly strengthen or weaken an existing theory or estab-
lish conditions under which the theory operates? In one
example of the latter case, a researcher tested the ap-
plicability of Kurt Lewin's concepts of topographical
psychology to institution-building analysis.
Impact2: Causal Relationships: Did the major conclu-
sion of the study embody a causal statement of any
kind? A study of employee burnout, for instance,
analyzed 21 factors as causes of burnout and another 17
factors as symptoms. In many disciplines, theory testing
is synonymous with testing a causal relationship. This
turns out not to be true among most of the public
administration projects.
Importance': Topic: Was the topic or issue under
study central to the field of public administration? As
our primary test, we asked whether the general subject
warranted at least a few pages of treatment in leading
textbooks on public administration. A study of re-
organization passed this test; a study of environmental
factors affecting water quality did not.
Importance2: Cutting Edge: Did the study involve the
type of research that is concerned with the invention of
new questions or the creation of new experience? Much
research in public administration is on the "trailing
edge" in the sense that it records past experience or
reports last year's news. A history of zero-base budget-
ing in a federal agency would be categorized as "trailing
edge"; an empirical challenge to the public choice pref-
erence for small jurisdictions would be "out front" and
considered "cutting edge." This test is a different one
than that of Importance'. A study could "invent new
questions or create new experience" and not deal with
an issue that has historically received much attention in
public administration. The reverse situation could also
be true.
Findings
The bulk of the projects in our study met few of these
six criteria. Twenty-six projects, a surprising 18 percent
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WHY CAN'T WE RESOLVE THE RESEARCH ISSUE IN PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION 51

TABLE 1
The Effects of Combining Three Tests Assessing the Impact, Validity,
and Importance of Dissertations Produced in Public Administration

MPORTANCL:
/ of these, 9 (or
6%o of the total)
dealt with a major
subject in Public
Administration or were
classified as
"leading edge"

VALIDITY:
of these, 21 (or 15% of the
total) used a research design
possessing some validity

IMPACT:
of these, 59 (or 42% of the total)
tested a theory or reached a conclusion
containing a causal statement

The sample consisted of 142 dissertations.

of the total, met none. The average project, 40 in all or
28 percent of the whole, met only one. When the 34 pro-
jects that met two of the criteria are added in, it turns
out that 100, or 70 percent of the 142 projects surveyed,
met no more than two of the six criteria. If the criteria
have validity as standards for evaluating research, it can
be fairly said that these projects have little capability of
making much of a contribution to the knowledge base
supporting public administration. The projects that
seem capable of making such a contribution, by con-
trast, are few in number. Only 42 projects, or 30 per-
cent, met three or more of the criteria. Only 19, or 13
percent, met four or more.
The cumulative effect of this situation on the state of
research in the field can be represented by a pyramid
with rapidly narrowing sides. This is shown in Table 1,
where the criteria are merged into three categories, with
the question of purpose omitted for now. At the base of
the pyramid is the entire group of research projects. Of
the 142 projects we studied, less than half tested a
theory or a causal statement, the criteria for impact. Of
those that had impact, only 21 were designed in a way
that would allow the reader to have much confidence in
the findings. Of those 21, only nine tackled a subject
classified as important to the field.
Validity: The biggest dropoff in the pyramid occurs
because of problems of validity in the studies. Only 30
(or 21 percent) of the 142 research projects met our test
of validity. The most commonly used research designs
fell outside of this criterion as we applied it. These
designs were the single case study, unaccompanied by
any statistical controls (37 projects, or 26 percent); and
the use of historical information, archives, the litera-
ture, or secondary sources without much attempt to in-
fer propositions from them (39 projects, or 27 percent).
Impact: Most projects (83, or 58 percent) did not set
out to test a theory or answer a question embodying a
causal proposition. In part, this seems to be due to a
lack of consensus on the purpose of research in public
administration, a matter discussed in more detail below.
Importance: More than half of the projects failed to
meet either criterion establishing importance. Surpris-
ingly, this number included many dissertations ranking
high on other criteria, a relationship that is also ex-
plored below. Only 55 projects (or 45 percent) addressed
a topic or subject generally considered to be important
in itself to the field. Only 24 (or 17 percent) attempted to
invent questions or create experience as opposed to cap-
turing experience, our criterion for being on the "cut-
ting edge." Seventy-three projects (or 51 percent) did
neither of these things.
Quality of the Research Enterprise
Why do most dissertation research projects fail to
meet even a majority of the criteria that might be used
to define research quality in public administration? Is
there a problem of emphasis in graduate schools of
public administration? Some leaders in the field have
observed that public administration programs have not

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 52 PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION
stressed research to the extent they should.'2 We won-
dered whether schools perceived as having the strongest
academic programs were exceptions to this generaliza-
tion and produced dissertation research of higher qual-
ity than others. If so, we could then suppose that these
institutions were setting research standards for other
schools to follow.
To assess the relationship, we constructed an ordinal
scale consisting of scores for validity, impact, cutting
edge, and importance, and a penalty for dissertations
whose purpose was essentially descriptive. We com-
pared this to the reputational ranking of U.S. public
administration and public affairs graduate programs by
88 academics surveyed by David R. Morgan and Ken-
neth J. Meier, a rating largely based on perceptions of
academic quality.13
Overall, public administration graduate programs
that ranked high on the Morgan-Meier scale did not
consistently produce dissertations of high quality. This
can be seen in Table 2. The percentages are in the ex-
pected direction-the top-rated schools produced pro-
portionately more high quality dissertations than the
middle and unranked universities. The difference, how-
ever, is small enough so that were one to do a conven-
tional test of statistical significance, one would not be
able to reject the null hypothesis."
Moreover, if a single unranked school that produced
16 doctorates of unusually low quality is removed from
the table, the high quality dissertations from the un-
ranked schools rise to 29 percent. This is practically in-
distinguishable from the 31 percent result for top-rated
schools.
Nor is there much variation within the "top 20" in-
stitutions. Of the 11 universities from that group that
produced two or more dissertations, only one school
consistently produced high quality projects."5 In-
dividually, the various university programs in public
administration tend to produce a mix of high, middle
and low quality dissertations, with the emphasis being
on the low side.
We suggest that this situation reflects the relatively
weak status accorded research in graduate public
administration programs, as well as a general lack of
agreement among program faculty as to the criteria that
research projects should meet. Our data indicate that
there does not even seem to be agreement on the key
question of whether doctoral education should be
oriented toward basic research.
Purpose
In a recent policy statement the National Association
of Schools of Public Affairs and Administration stated
that the doctoral degree in public administration should
"prepare students to undertake significant research." 16
In our survey, we incorporated under the heading of sig-
nificant research those projects which utilized generally
accepted social science methods to test propositions or
analyze phenomena. We omitted applied management
projects (even those that used scientific methods, such
as the evaluation of a specific program).
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REVIEW
Based on our sample, it appears that a sizable number
of people in the field do not believe that the doctorate
should be a research degree. Less than two-thirds of the
projects, 91 in all (or 64 percent), fit our definition of
research. Included in this group are eight purely theo-
retical dissertations (6 percent of the overall total) which
can be seen as contributing to a basic understanding of
phenomena in the field.
Perhaps most importantly, a substantial number of
projects were neither basic nor applied. They appeared
to have no purpose at all. Thirty projects, or 21 percent,
did little more than describe an existing process. These
writers either stated no conclusions or reached conclu-
sions that were so general they were of little signifi-
cance.
Twenty-one projects, or 15 percent of the sample,
consisted of problem-solving exercises done on
practitioner-type issues. A candidate might set out, for
example, to design a training program for his or her
agency and report on the results. At best, these projects
could be categorized as applied research on manage-
ment problems. At worst, they were little more than a
narrative description of a problem in one's work
environment.
Actually, the total number of practitioner-type dis-
sertations in our sample may be more than 21. While
many schools insist that practitioners learn how to con-
duct social science research, it appears that a number of
practitioner-students finesse this requirement by doing
research on subjects wholly within their own agencies.
Fifty projects, or more than one-third (35 percent) of
the public administration doctoral research effort
reported in 1981, consist of data drawn from a single
agency.
Frederick Mosher, writing on "Research in Public
Administration," suggested that the field's concern for
"real world" applications has kept it from developing
the type of commitment to scientific inquiry that
generates "respectability . . . in the eyes of the more
methodologically disciplined."'7 Those words were
penned nearly 30 years ago. It appears, based on our
analysis of dissertation research, that a great deal of
uncertainty over research purpose and criteria is still be-
ing transmitted to graduate students by their university
mentors. The debate over the purpose of the doctoral
degree-whether it should be a research degree or
whether it can be an applied-practitioner's degree-is
certainly a legitimate one, but the discussion has the
detrimental effect of passing on a great deal of uncer-
tainty over what constitutes meaningful research in
public administration.
Nature of the Field
Are these problems inherent in the nature of the field?
Dwight Waldo, replying to Simon's call for more scien-
tific research, suggested that important issues in public
administration do not always lend themselves to the
neat distinction between "facts" and "values" that
logical positivism requires. 8 Is it possible, then, that the
subjects which may be of greatest concern to the field
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WHY CAN'T WE RESOLVE THE RESEARCH ISSUE IN PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION 53

TABLE 2
Quality of Dissertations Produced by Institutions
as Ranked on the Morgan-Meier Academic Scale

Institutions
Top 20 Ranked 21st Unranked
Institutions through 50th Institutions Total

Highest Quality Dissertations 18 7 11 36

(Score of 15 to 30) (31%) (24%) (20%)
Middle Quality Dissertations 17 7 11 35
(Score of 5 to 10) (29%) (24%) (20%)
Lowest Quality Dissertations 24 15 32 71
(Scoreof -10 to 0) (41%) (52%) (59%)
Total 59 29 54 142
(100%) (100%) (100%)

X2 = 3.8 p < .50 (two-tailed test)

are not really susceptible to theory testing, causal
analysis, and rigorous research design?
The research projects in our study allow one test of
this possibility. As Table 3 indicates, the projects can be
divided into those that either deal with major issues in
public administration, such as civil service reform, or
are on the "cutting edge," and those which are outside
the mainstream and on the trailing edge of inquiry.
Doctoral students who deal with a major topic in
public administration are more likely to test theories
and causal propositions than students who deal with
peripheral topics. This relationship is revealed by a com-
parison of the totals in the four large cells of the table.
In the eyes of the candidates themselves (or their ad-
visors), important topics in public administration do ap-
pear to be susceptible to theory testing and causal
analysis. This bit of evidence suggests, therefore, that
the intangibles inherent in public administration do not
rule out systematic inquiry.
But a related finding qualifies this conclusion. It has
been suggested that research methodologies "structured
by the social sciences" are not as appropriate to public
administration as are methods structured by "our own
unique needs. " 19 The data from our survey seem to bear
out this contention. Candidates who try to test a theory
or a causal statement have a better chance of producing
a high validity dissertation if they do not address an im-
portant issue. This can be demonstrated by comparing
the detailed figures in the upper half of the table. While
the comparison does not achieve conventional standards
of statistical significance, the direction of the relation-
ship is intriguing. It may be easier to achieve high valid-
ity if one stays away from theories or causal proposi-
tions that are central to the field. By virtue of their
nature, the major issues may be precisely those issues
which cannot be resolved with any sort of certainty.
There are two sides to this coin. As stated above,
research methodologies "structured by the social sci-
ences" may be inappropriate in public administration.
On the other hand, scientific methodologies may be ap-
plicable, but public administration may be devoting too
much time and attention to issues that cannot be re-
solved with certainty (e.g., the effectiveness of govern-
mental reorganization in Tanzania). Unresolvable issues
may be important, but if they cannot be resolved their
debate is unlikely to contribute much to the develop-
ment of the field at this time.
The discipline of political science confronted a some-
what similar situation prior to the behavioral revolu-
tion. Propositions about "good" principles of constitu-
tional government could not be resolved through social
science research, so the discipline left those questions
and moved on to other issues. Public administration
may be in a similar quandary. Trying to calculate with
any degree of validity what constitutes "good" admin-
istration may be an exercise in futility.
Implications and Conclusions
Dissertation research should represent the best
research of which public administration is capable. Dis-
sertations play an important role in building the knowl-
edge base that any discipline must possess if future stu-
dents are to be educated in anything beyond folk wis-
dom and gut reactions. Emphasis on research methodol-
ogy and design is essential if inquiry in public admin-
istration is to progress. As Martin Landau wrote in his
essay on "Political Science and Public Administration,"
. . . methodology, in its basic sense, has to do with the organizing
assumptions, the concepts and definitions that underlie any systematic
inquiry. These are the elements that provide a field with coherence and
relevance. Hence a close and continuing concern with the logic and
procedure of analysis remains a prime necessity for any discipline if it
is to locate its center and clarify its principal points of reference.20
Landau argues that even though public administra-
tion is an applied field, it must have an empirical, rigor-
ous, and systematic core. Dissertation research provides
an opportunity for the development of the building
blocks necessary to advance the field, as well as a testing
ground for research standards. When dissertation
research reveals as questionable a picture as it does in
our survey, and when we consider the point that doc-

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 54 PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION
TABLE 3
Relation of the Impact and Methodology of Dissertations
in Public Administration to the Importance of the Topics They Study
Impact Methodology Cutting Edge Central to PA Totals
Tests Theory or Causal Statement High Validity 9 12 21
Low
Does Not Test a Theory or High Validity 3 6 9
Make a Causal Statement Low Validity 31 43 74
Totals 69
Whole table (2 x 2): X2 = 4.65 p < .05
Upper half only: X2 = 3.66 p < .10
x2 = 2.68 p < .20 correcting for continuity
toral programs propose to educate men and women who
will take their places among the future leaders of the
field, it seems time to query the nature and contribution
not only of doctoral research but of the standards that
guide public administration research in general.
We began this project with the aim of reporting con-
tributions made by doctoral research to the develop-
ment of public administration. We employed the
NASPAA standard that doctoral dissertations should
"prepare students to undertake significant research in
their subsequent careers."2 Moreover, as NASPAA
declares, a dissertation should "demonstrate that the
student has mastered the skills required for systematic
exploration and analysis."22 It should also deal with
questions important to the field and test propositions
that have an impact on the field.
These are criteria that would apply to most research
projects in the social sciences. We wanted to utilize such
criteria to tabulate examples of doctoral research mak-
ing contributions to public administration. We can
report, for example, that one student confirmed the
adage that reorganizations do not save money by
analyzing 12 major state reorganizations. Another stu-
dent presented evidence challenging the public choice
preference for small jurisdictions and minimal bureauc-
ratization.
Studies such as these, however, appear to be excep-
tions to the norm in public administration. Most of the
projects we analyzed did not meet a majority of our
criteria. If our survey is any indication, most public ad-
ministration dissertations are not set up in such a way
that they can make much of a contribution to the devel-
opment of our conceptual base or even to our base of
information.
As a consequence of our overall findings, we con-
clude that the underlying issue in the Hutchins-Mosher
debate is still unresolved today. This is certainly true of
doctoral research. Moreover, as we have suggested
above, the state of dissertation research very likely
reflects the state of research in public administration as
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REVIEW
Major Topic Captures Experience
and/or on Topic Not
Validity 26 12 38
35 24
34 49
73 142
a whole. Scholars have not conclusively demonstrated
that public administration lends itself to systematic ex-
ploration. The purpose of on-going research is not suffi-
ciently directed toward theory-building or proposition-
testing. Public administration does not employ agreed-
upon methods and research designs for analyzing and
classifying data. Neither do we have generally accepted
research criteria to apply to the analysis of topics of fun-
damental interest in our field.
The criteria we utilized to rate doctoral research proj-
ects include an emphasis on certain social science-based
methodologies. Are we correct in this approach, given
the possibility that important public administration
topics may not lend themselves to scientific verification?
Substantial resistance to the use of social science
methodologies exists in public administration. A
number of researchers are clearly uncertain as to
whether our major research tools should be those
utilized in the social sciences. Some obviously believe
that the subjects being researched do not lend them-
selves to purposive social science inquiry. This situation
poses major validity problems for a substantial portion
of the research carried out in public administration.
At the same time, however, of the six criteria posed
there are a number of doctoral students who satisfy the
criterion of a rigorous methodology but none of the
others in their work. These students seemingly are un-
concerned whether they are applying valid methodolo-
gies to anything really important in public administra-
tion. Perhaps the conclusion that should be drawn from
all this is as we suggested earlier: public administration
needs methodologies and research designs structured by
"our own unique needs."
Scholars in the field of public administration have
been concerned with issues related to the role and tech-
niques of research for at least 50 years. These issues are
even more crucial in the 1980s, with the very existence of
public administration being questioned as universities
cut back or even eliminate programs in fields not con-
sidered mature. It seems time for our field to make the
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 WHY CAN'T WE RESOLVE THE RESEARCH ISSUE IN PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION 55
resolution of these issues a matter of top priority. To the
extent that research is the engine that moves the field
forward, public administration has substantial work to
do. If our analysis is any guide, our profession is not
close to achieving its research priorities, or even agree-
ing on what they are. Especially within the leading
academic programs of public administration, there
needs to be substantially more attention paid to the
criteria by which significant research projects are
defined and evaluated.
In order to pose the issue as clearly as we can, the
authors of this article assert that the criteria for judging
Notes
1. Robert M. Hutchins, "Shall We Train for Public Administra-
tion? Impossible," and William E. Mosher, "Schools Can Do
Much," Public Administration Review, March 1938, published
by the Maxwell School, Syracuse University; as reprinted in
Dwight Waldo (ed.), Ideas and Issues in Public Administration
(New York: McGraw-Hill, 1953), 227-232. The citation is on
page 231.
2. Herbert Simon, Administrative Behavior, 2nd ed. (New York:
The Free Press, 1957), 42.
3. Robert A. Dahl, "The Science of Public Administration: Three
Problems," Public Administration Review 7 (Winter 1947), 11.
4. Frederick C. Mosher, "Research in Public Administration:
Some Notes and Suggestions," Public Administration Review 16
(Summer 1956), 178.
5. Charles S. Liebman, "Teaching Public Administration: Can We
Teach What We Don't Know?" Public Administration Review
23 (September 1963), 167-169.
6. G. David Garson and E. Sam Overman, Public Management
Research Directory, two volumes (Washington, D.C.: National
Association of Schools of Public Affairs and Administration,
1981 and 1982).
7. Robert P. Biller, "Research and the Public Sector: Choices for
NASPAA, " a paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Na-
tional Association of Schools of Public Affairs and Administra-
tion, Portland, Oregon, October 15, 1982.
8. See, for example, Dwight Waldo, The Study of Public Admin-
istration (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Co., 1955); Rufus E.
Miles, "The Search for Identity of Graduate Schools of Public
Affairs," Public Administration Review 27 (November 1967),
351-353; and Frederick C. Mosher, "Research in Public
Administration. "
9. There is a lag between the completion of a dissertation and the
publication of the abstract in Dissertation A bstracts Inter-
national. The 142 projects reported in the 1981 edition were com-17. Mosher, "Research in Public Administration," 176.
18. Waldo, The Study of Public Administration, 60-66.
pleted during 1980 and the first part of 1981. It is quite possible
that additional public administration research is reported in Dis-
sertation Abstracts under headings other than public administra-
tion; e.g., political science, international relations, economics,
urban studies, and the like. Given the difficulties in screening
dissertations under these headings for study, we restricted our
data base to those projects listed and identified by their authors
and institutions as public administration research.
10. For an identification )f the general criteria that define research
quality in the behavioral sciences, see Fred N. Kerlinger, Foun-
JANUARY/FEBRUARY 1984
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research in public administration should be the presence
of a basic research purpose, internal and external valid-
ity, theoretical impact and demonstration of causal rela-
tionships, an important topic, and presence on the cut-
ting edge of the field. If public administration is to be a
mature field of study, we feel that it must reach agree-
ment on criteria of this nature. We propose that
doctoral-granting institutions and scholars already in
the field test their research projects against these
criteria. The evolution of agreed-upon research criteria
in public administration is a top priority for all of us
now.
dations of Behavioral Research (New York: Holt, Rinehart and
Winston, 1964).
11. For a discussion of the factors affecting internal and external
validity, see Donald T. Campbell and Julian C. Stanley, Experi-
mental and Quasi-Experimental Designs for Research (Chicago:
Rand McNally, 1963).
12. See, for example, Rufus Miles, "The Search for Identity,"
351.
13. David R. Morgan and Kenneth J. Meier, "Reputation and Pro-
ductivity of Public Administration/Affairs Programs: Addi-
tional Data," Public Administration Review 42 (March/April
1982), 171-173. While the ranking by 88 academics is tech-
nically a ranking of MPA programs, it is at the same time (and
perhaps even more strongly) a ranking of general academic
quality. With few exceptions, ranked MPA programs are pro-
ducers of doctorates. We felt that the disjunction between the
production of MPAs and Ph.D.s was not so great as to bar this
ranking as a general measure of academic standing at the
graduate level.
14. Since we are working from the whole set of dissertations
reported in 1981, rather than a sample, statistical tests in this
case are being used to assess the probability that the relationship
was randomly generated from a larger set of possible results. See
Denton E. Morrison and Ramon E. Henkel (eds.), The Signifi-
cance Test Controversy (Chicago: Aldine, 1970).
15. The test was whether a university produced dissertations with a
score in the upper half of our scale more than three-quarters of
the time.
16. National Association of Schools of Public Affairs and Admin-
istration, "Doctoral Training in Public Administration and
Related Fields," a statement adopted by the Comprehensive
Schools Section of NASPAA, Lexington, Kentucky, October 20,
1981, 1.
19. See Robert P. Biller, in a report to the National Association of
Schools of Public Affairs and Administration Executive Coun-
cil, February 4 and 5, 1982, 6.
20. Martin Landau, "Political Science and Public Administration:
'Field' and the Concept of Decision-Making," in Landau,
Political Theory and Political Science (New York: MacMillan,
1972), 178.
21. NASPAA, "Doctoral Training," 1.
22. Ibid.