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Twenty-Ninth Annual APPAM Research Conference 8-10 November, 2007 - Washington Marriott Hotel and Embassy Suites Hotel- Washington, DC What Else Shapes Public Policy Analysis and Management?

• How do I submit a proposal?
• What happens to my proposal after it is submitted?
• How does the APPAM office assign proposals to categories?
• What are my chances of my proposal being accepted for the conference?
• How can I increase the likelihood that my proposal will be accepted for APPAM?
• My proposal has been accepted for inclusion in the conference, now what?
• My proposal was not accepted for inclusion in the conference, how can I participate in the conference?
• How do I upload my paper(s) to APPAM?
• How do people join the program committee?

• Click to submit a panel
• Click to submit a paper
• Click to submit a workshop or roundtable

1. The proposal will be classified by the APPAM office into one of the categories for the conference. The category you selected for the proposal may be different from that assigned by the office.
2. All the proposals will be supplied to the conference program committee for review. Members of the committee usually take responsibility for one or more of the conference categories. The committee members may recommend to the APPAM president-elect that your proposal be accepted, rejected, or modified. Some paper proposals from new/junior scholars may be recommended for a poster session. The president-elect makes the final decision on all proposals.
3. You will be notified in late June or early July about the status of the proposal for the conference. If accepted, the APPAM office will include your proposal in the preliminary and final conference programs, and send you information about your responsibilities as a conference participant.
   

The office looks for the main contribution of the research in the proposal. If that contribution fits with the category you selected, then the category will not be changed. If the contribution seems to pertain to a different category, then the office may reassign the proposal to a new category. For example, a paper submitted to "quantitative methods" that does not seem to develop or evaluate new methods may be reassigned to the substantive area to which a method is applied (e.g., employment/training). A paper submitted to "welfare/workfare" that evaluates the impact of welfare reform on family circumstances or children's well-being may be assigned to "social and family policy" or "child policy." The program committee may also transfer proposals to other categories during its review of the submissions. The program committee will know both the original category that you chose for your proposal, and the category assigned to it by the APPAM office. Here are some brief descriptions of the criteria the office uses to assign categories.

Public Policy Categories:

Aging/Retirement - Proposal pertains primarily to policies that influence the wellbeing of the elderly including income support in retirement. May overlap frequently with disability, health, and public finance.

Child Policy - Proposal pertains primarily to policies that influence the wellbeing of children. May overlap frequently with health, social and family policy, and welfare/workfare. Most often, proposals directly related to the education of children will be referred to the education area.

Crime/Illegal Drugs - Proposal pertains primarily to criminal justice policy or policy responses to drug abuse and illegal drug markets. May overlap frequently with health.

Cultural/Arts Policy - Proposal pertains primarily to policies that affect cultural/arts institutions, freedom of artistic expression, or consumption of cultural/artistic offerings. May overlap with nonprofit management.

Disability - Proposal pertains primarily to income support and other policies for persons classified as disabled, and to the processeses of recognizing disability for public policy. May overlap frequently with social and family policy and welfare/workfare.

Education - Proposal pertains primarily to education policy at levels with an emphasis on issues internal to education such as student performance and the overall performance of educational institutions. May overlap with frequently with employment/training and public finance/taxation.

Employment/Training - Proposal pertains primarily to policies that influence employment opportunities for different populations. May overlap frequently with evaluation and welfare/workfare.

Environment - Proposal pertains primarily to policies that influence the impact of human activity on the natural environment. May overlap frequently with regulation.

Health - Proposal focuses on policy and management issues in health care. May overlap frequently with behavioral policy research, crime/drugs, ethnicity/race, gender and policy, social and family policy, and welfare/workfare.

Housing/Community Development - Proposal pertains primarily to policy issues related to community economic development and housing (including homelessness). May overlap frequently with employment/training, public finance, social and family policy, and welfare/workfare.

Immigration - Proposal pertains primarily to policies that influence the movement of persons across national boundaries, and the well-being of immigrants. May overlap with education, employment/training, health and cross-national comparisons.

National Security/Defense - Proposal pertains primarily to defense/security policy including homeland security. May overlap with public management.

Public Finance/Taxation - Proposal pertains primarily to public financial analysis, budgeting, taxation, and related topics. May overlap frequently with education and regulation.

Science and Technology Policy - Proposal pertains to policies that influence innovation and investment in science/technology. May overlap frequently with regulation. APPAM often assigns e-government related proposals to this area.

Social and Family Policy - Proposal pertains primarily to policies that influence the condition of social and family structures, including those related to the wellbeing of the aged. Emphasis should be on social and family circumstances. May overlap frequently with child policy, employment/training, evaluation, health, and welfare/workfare.

Transportation - Proposal pertains to policies that influence transportation systems or the impact of transportation systems on other policy issues.

Welfare/Workfare - Proposal pertains primarily to policies that provide financial assistance to the needy, including those that require work in exchange for benefits. Emphasis should be on the policies and their immediate impacts. May overlap frequently with child policy, employment/training, evaluation, health, and social and family policy.

Other Public Policy - APPAM is open to proposals on a wide variety of policy issues.

Public Management Categories:

Decision Making Institutions/Processes - Proposal pertains to the structures of decision making in public policy and management and to their consequences for results. The level of analysis may be very general (e.g., democratic vs. non-democratic decision systems) or very specific (e.g., the consequences of changes in a particular decision making setting).

Implementation - Proposal pertains primarily to problems or methods of implementation. May overlap frequently with public finance, management reforms/systems, and specific policy topics.

Intergovernmental Relations - Proposal pertains primarily to problems of intergovernmental coordination on matters of policy and management.

International Governance - Proposal pertains to public management issues outside the U.S. context or to international institutions.

Management Systems/Reforms - Proposal pertains to how public management is organized, and systems designed to increase performance in public management.

Nonprofit Management - Proposal pertains primarily to management issues for nonprofit organizations, the role of nonprofits in broader public policy concerns, and related topics.

Regulation - Proposal pertains primarily to policies that regulate economic and related activity. May overlap frequently with environment, public finance, and science/technology.

Other Public Management - APPAM welcomes proposals on other public management topics.

Methods Categories:

Economic Methods - Proposal pertains primarily to the development and application of economic methods in public policy. May overlap frequently with evaluation, policy analytic methods and quantitative methods. This area now encompasses behavioral policy research.

Evaluation - Proposal focuses primarily on new evaluation methods, recent examples of complex evaluations of policies and programs, or the role of evaluation in the policy process. May overlap frequently with education, employment/training, health, quantitative methods, social and family policy, and welfare/workfare.

Policy Analytic Methods - Proposal focuses on basic issues in policy analysis methodology rather than to the application of an analytic method to a specific problem. May overlap frequently with economic methods, evaluation, qualitative methods, and quantitative methdods.

Qualitative Methods - Proposal pertains primarily to the development and evaluation of various qualitative methods. May overlap frequently with education, evaluation, health, policy analytic methods, and public management.

Quantitative Methods - Proposal pertains primarily to the development and evaluation of various quantitative methods. May overlap frequently with evaluation, and policy analytic methods.

Other Methods - APPAM welcomes proposals on other methodological topics.

Cross-Cutting Categories:

Cross-National Comparisons - Proposal pertains primarily to comparing how policy and management issues are evolving in multiple national settings. May overlap frequently with many other categories. APPAM prefers to integrate comparative research into other conference areas as appropriate.

Ethnicity/Race in Policy/Management - Proposal focuses on ethnicity/race as a fundamental/primary factor in an analysis of policy and management issues. May overlap with almost every other category.

Gender in Policy/Management - Proposal focuses on gender as a fundamental/primary factor in an analysis of policy and management issues. May overlap with almost every other category.

Intersection of Policy and Management - Proposal explores the relationships between policy and management issues (e.g., the consequences of implementation problems for policy design and evaluation). May overlap with almost every other category.

Public Policy and Management Education - Proposal pertains primarily to curriculum issues in graduate education in public policy, or related topics, as informed by recent developments in research and practice across public policy, public management, methods and other categories.

Other Cross-Cutting - APPAM welcomes proposals that pertain to other cross-cutting issues in public policy and management.

In recent years about 40% of all proposals are rejected, and a substantial number of accepted proposals are modified by the program committee. Modifications often involve dropping papers from panel proposals or substituting papers. The program committee also may choose to merge two or more panels. Historically, the acceptance rate for panel proposals is significantly higher than that for individual papers or roundtables. APPAM has expanded the conference to occupy all time slots available for panels in the three days of the conference. With the number of proposals growing, this means that participation in the conference is becoming more competitive.

Here are some tips for improving your proposal to increase the chances of getting accepted.

1. Propose a complete panel rather than an individual paper. The program committee consists entirely of volunteers. By proposing a complete panel, you are simplifying their work considerably, especially if the proposal shines in terms of its overall quality and coherence. When you submit an individual paper proposal, you are speculating that there will be several other papers submitted on a similar topic, and that the program committee will have the opportunity to assemble a panel ad hoc.
2. Propose a panel that builds on the conference theme. The program committee appreciates proposals that reflect the theme set by the APPAM president-elect. The theme traditionally is broad enough to encompass a wide variety of proposals, and usually about 25% of all submissions directly reflect the theme.
3. Propose a panel that includes some senior researchers who are known to the field. Junior-level researchers may not be able to recruit these individuals to present papers, but they may find it relatively easy to find senior people to serve as panel chairs and discussants.
4. Propose a panel that is diverse along several dimensions including institutional affiliation, gender, race/ethnicity, and national emphasis. APPAM has a policy of not accepting panels for the research conference in which all of the paper presenters have the same institutional affiliation. Any such panel proposal will be revised before being accepted. APPAM also has made a conscious effort to encourage gender and racial/ethnic diversity in all areas of the conference, and that effort will intensify in future years.
5. Show off your data. The APPAM conference is the place to bring new data to bear on crucial research questions. Papers and panels that demonstrate new data for the inspection of the APPAM community always are of great interest to the program committee.
6. Co-author with seasoned APPAM participants. By attending the APPAM conferences, you will have the opportunity to network with some of the most influential researchers in public policy and management. Hopefully, that networking will translate into opportunities for collaboration on future research to be submitted to the conference.
   

If you have any specific concerns about your proposal, the APPAM office is available to assist you. Resources in the office can help to identify potential panel chairs and discussants, and refer you to other scholars working in your area.

• APPAM website will contain specific notification information regarding the status of your proposal late June/early July. You will need the unique ID code to access this special notification page.



• APPAM has official guidelines for presenters at the 2008 Fall Research Conference in Los Angeles, CA. All participants should download and read these guidelines in pdf format by clicking here (PDF format)

The APPAM office is working closely with the Program Committee for the 2008 Fall Research Conference to recruit chairs and discussants for panel sessions. You can volunteer to serve as chair or discussant for a particular session by emailing the APPAM office your name, affiliation and information regarding your field of expertise.

To review the guidelines for the chairs and discussants please click here (PDF format).

APPAM is looking into a new method for posting conference papers that will allow authors to upload files directly rather than sending papers to the APPAM office. Please check the APPAM website starting in August for further information.

The APPAM president-elect appoints the program committee. There usually is substantial overlap on the committee from year to year, but over a period of three years there usually is a complete turnover on the committee. MOst of the persons appointed to the committee are senior researchers and practitioners known for their expertise in several of the conference categories. The program committee selects proposals for inclusion in the conference and also assists with the recruitment of chairs and discussants for the panels. Anyone interested in serving on the program Committee should notify the APPAM office.