WINTER 2012 - National Association of Schools of Public Affairs and ...

Patricia Shields, Nandhini Rangarajan, and Lewis Stewart
University ARPs by entering “link:” followed immediately by the ARP’s URL.
The details of variable measurement and data sources are summarized in Table 5.
The hypotheses were tested using multiple regression.
RESULTS
The results section is divided into two parts. First an overview of the Applied
Research Projects is presented using descriptive statistics. Next the hypotheses are
tested using multivariate statistics.
Descriptive Statistics
Level of Government.
Table 5 provides descriptive statistics associated with level of government.
Of all ARPs (N = 290), 49.3% examined local/regional issues, 38.3% examined
state-level issues, and only 5.5% dealt with federal-level issues. The focus on
state and local government among the ARPs is not surprising given the location
of the MPA program and that most students work, or plan to work, in the
state. However, when download activity of all ARPs was broken down by level
of government, we observed that the average downloads for ARPs dealing with
issues at the state level was higher (526.1 full-text downloads) than the average
downloads for those at the local/regional level (465.2 full-text downloads).
Table 5.
Average Downloads by Government Level/Sector
Level of Government/
Sector*
% of 290
ARPs
170 Journal of Public Affairs Education
% of 136,072
Downloads† Mean Median SD
Federal government 5.5% 8.0% 677.6 478.5 479.2
State government 38.3% 42.9% 526.1 407.0 452.3
Local/regional
government
49.3% 48.9% 465.2 400.0 343.8
Nonprofit 2.1% 3.0% ** ** **
Other 11.0% 9.3% 395.0 321.0 326.6
Totals 469.2 395.0 367.8
* Use of more than one is possible.
† Downloads as of August 18, 2009
** Too few downloads for meaningful averages