Jerry Reiter and Mike Cohen

Statisticians and other quantitative analysts often carry out evidence-based research that has direct relevance to important public policy questions. Such research might involve, for example, careful modeling of data to address issues of causal inference, investigating the properties of methods typically used in policy evaluation, or explaining the results of elections.

The ASA journal Statistics and Public Policy publishes peer-reviewed articles describing such research on outstanding, complex public policy issues, where the use of appropriate statistical methods is shown to clarify such questions.

Statistics and Public Policy (SPP) is an online, open access journal. The editors are looking for articles that apply sound statistical thinking and methods to issues related to public policy. Unlike other ASA journals, submitted articles need not include innovative statistical methodology—insightful and appropriate application of existing techniques is perfectly acceptable.

Indeed, this is the sweet spot for SPP. For example, we welcome submissions in which the statistical methods may not be quite innovative enough for publication in the Journal of the American Statistical Association or the Annals of Applied Statistics, but are perhaps more involved than what is typically published in substantive journals. We encourage submissions from all areas of statistics and public policy, including education, energy, the environment, health, politics, and policy evaluation.

The audience for the journal is interdisciplinary and large. Some articles have readership counts approaching 10,000.

Recent articles include the following:

• “Inference of Long-Term Screening Outcomes for Individuals with Screening Histories,” by Dongfeng Wu, Karen Kafadar, and Shesh N. Rai uses a patient’s screening history to assess future likelihood of disease and the benefits of future screening.
• “A Spatial Study of the Location of Superfund Sites and Associated Cancer Risk,” by Raid Amin, Arlene Nelson, and Shannon McDougall, assesses the impact of the pollution associated with superfund sites on cancer incidence.
• “Study of Salary Differentials by Gender and Discipline,” by Lynne Billard, examines how the use of models that failed to include interaction effects could mislead about the impact of gender and discipline on academic salaries.
• “19 Things We Learned from the 2016 Election,” by Andrew Gelman and Julia Azari, offers and evaluates a variety of explanations for the results of the 2016 presidential election.
• “Officer Risk Factors Associated with Police Shootings: A Matched Case-Control Study,” by Greg Ridgeway, features how the officers were linked to the use of deadly force. 

SPP editors seek to increase the number of published articles and add special features. For example, they are planning special sections dedicated to statistical methods for characterizing partisan gerrymandering when drawing electoral districts, articles describing the US federal government’s data strategy, and possibly articles looking into the details of the most recent midterm elections. 

You can submit manuscripts for peer review using the Scholar One management system. Links are available on the SPP main web page. If you have questions about the journal, contact the editor, Jerry Reiter.