Q: Why was this data collected?
A: Leaders from the schools of public policy, public affairs and public administration
in the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management (APPAM) wanted to collect
this data to help students interested in the MPA/MPP make decisions about graduate
school. Prior to the collection of this data in 2009, there was no other similar
resource available to students.
Q: How was this data collected?
A: APPAM invited all of the schools in APPAM and also in the National Association
of Schools of Public Affairs and Administration (NASPAA) to complete an online survey
for any of their MPA/MPP programs. Participation in the survey was voluntary. Approximately
60 schools submitted data for 100 total MPA/MPP programs during the summer of 2009.
Q: Was there any effort to verify the data or otherwise ensure its quality?
A: Yes. All participating schools agreed to be subject to an audit of the data.
Two schools were selected at random and audited in September 2009. The audit reports
are available for public inspection. All participating programs were contacted to
verify their data and resolve any possible errors in the information submitted through
the online survey. The quality control process was managed by the professional research
firm Westat (http://www.westat.com).
Q: Why are some well-known programs not found in this data?
A: Participation was completely voluntary and some MPA/MPP programs decided for
whatever reason to not submit their data. APPAM has an online directory of its member
programs here (https://www.appam.org/education/index.asp).
NASPAA has an online directory of its member programs here (http://www.naspaa.org/students/graduate/schsearch.asp).
Consult these directories if programs of interest are not included in the data.
Q: Some participating programs have information missing in the data. Why?
A: All questions on the survey allowed programs to not supply answers at their discretion.
In most cases, data is missing when a program simply did not have the means to supply
an accurate response during the time available to complete the survey. In other
cases, programs did not collect the information necessary to answer certain questions.