The new ASA-sponsored journal Statistics and Public Policy (SPP) published its inaugural issue late last month. The issue contains the following six articles:
- “The Twentieth-Century Reversal: How Did the Republican States Switch to the Democrats and Vice Versa?” by Andrew Gelman of Columbia University
- “How Informative Are Vital Registration Data for Estimating Maternal Mortality? A Bayesian Analysis of WHO Adjustment Data and Parameters” by Fengqing Chao and Leontine Alkema, both of the National University of Singapore
- “The Sensitivity of Value-Added Estimates to Specification Adjustments: Evidence from School- and Teacher-Level Models in Missouri” by Mark Ehlert of the Economic and Policy Analysis Research Center, Cory Koedel of the University of Missouri, Eric Parsons of the Economic and Policy Analysis Research Center, and Michael J. Podgursky of the University of Missouri
- “Does the Model Matter? Exploring the Relationship Between Different Student Achievement-Based Teacher Assessment” by Dan Goldhaber of the University of Washington Bothell, Joe Walch of the University of Washington Bothell, and Brian Gabele of the Seattle Public School System
- “Weight Calculations for Panel Surveys with Sub-Sampling and Split-Off Tracking” by Kristen Himelein of the World Bank (this paper describes a household panel survey design used in Sub-Saharan Africa as part of a Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation project)
- “The Statistical Role in Voter Identification (ID) Laws” by David Marker of Westat (this paper summarizes statistical issues in a court case between the State of Texas and the U.S. Federal Government regarding recent state legislation)
The breadth of these articles and diverse backgrounds of the authors illustrates the scope to which this new journal aspires.
Because the ASA leadership thinks statistics has an essential role in public policy, it has decided to provide this journal for free to everyone in the hope that it will promote science-based policy and demonstrate the ASA’s advocacy for our profession as a critical contributor to local, state, federal, national, and international decisionmaking.
This first issue can be accessed at Taylor and Francis online.
SPP is entirely electronic and aims to publish articles that (1) apply good statistical practice to data sets that may inform the public and decisionmakers about matters of policy and (2) discuss statistical issues associated with evidence-based public policy and planning. SPP has no requirement for methodological novelty. Interested authors can submit papers at Manuscript Central (select Statistics and Public Policy from the drop-down menu).
Leave a Reply