The Scientific Approach and Its Impact on American Public Administration - Research Proposal Example

The paper 'The Scientific Approach and Its Impact on American Public Administration' is a delightful example of a research proposal on politics.
Public administration is intended to aid the functions of governance by allowing an academic investigation into best practices for implementation. Given the wide scope of public administration, its importance to any society is central to ensuring good governance and the achievement of collective goals (Menzel and White). A number of different approaches have been utilized over the years to bolster public administration outcomes including the scientific approach. In comparison to other approaches, the scientific approach relies on the acquisition of facts through organized research in order to bolster functioning. It is common for most advanced nations to utilize the scientific approach in public administration to some degree. American public administration is also influenced in large part by the scientific method with methods such as measurement of work, cost accounting, time and motion studies, etc. being employed.

The research questions for the proposed research are as follows:

1. What major impacts did the scientific method have on public administration in the eyes of public managers?
2. What is the prevalence of scientific methods utilization in public administration based on organization size?
3. What are the major differences in public administration before and after the implementation of the scientific method in America?

In order to carry out this research, various forms of data collection will be utilized. The first phase will rely on gathering the projected impacts of the scientific method on public administration by interviewing public managers. The contention is to develop a set of broad impacts that will be investigated later in the research. The interviews will be conducted one on one with public managers using an already developed interview format.

The results of the interviews will be used to gather broad impacts that will be investigated for their prevalence in public administration domains depending on organization size. Questionnaires will be developed to assess the prevalence of the scientific method impacts in American public administration. These questionnaires will be administered to all levels of public managers in public organizations keeping organization size in perspective. Results from these questionnaires will be investigated using statistical methods such as regression and correlation to examine how prevalent scientific methods impacts are in public administration in small, medium and large public organizations.

The results of the questionnaires will be manipulated to bring out the impacts of the scientific method depending on organization size for public administration. The projected impacts will be utilized in order to form comparisons for public administration before and after the implementation of the scientific method. Data collection will be made complicated by the schedules of top-line managers in public organizations. Ample time must be provided to respondents to fill out questionnaires given their tight daily schedules and responsibilities.

Data analysis in the interview stage will be complicated by the presence of differentiated opinions. However, once major impacts are classified from the interview results, questionnaire development will become much easier. Results from the questionnaires would be easier to analyze given their quantitative nature. The overall scope of data collection will allow for insight and findings while being manageable in daily work schedules.