PAF 101 Chapter Notes - Chapter 2: Infotrac, Dewey Decimal Classification, United States Census Bureau
Document Summary
Your goal: to learn how to locate and evaluate published information on your public policy issue. Gathering information is an essential task in the analysis of public policies. Skills necessary to gather info. take years to develop. Much of the information located is wrong, outdated, or not related to the societal problem or public policies. Must have basic knowledge on topic before analyzation and critical evaluation. Information should correlate with already known knowledge. Make a judgements about the reputation of the source: Government publications can usually be trusted more than other sources. Most reliable way to access information is to seek multiple sources on the same fact. High theoretical and very specialized which limits usefulness in the study of public policy cases. How to get started on your information search: select an interesting topic, scan newspapers, radio, tv for discussion on the topic, discuss topic with friend or family, think about topic in a broad way.
