Teaching MPA Statistics Courses: A Review of Textbooks

Many researchers, scholars, and teachers in public affairs, policy, and administration programs face the challenge of teaching statistics and data analysis to masters students. Our students require a certain level of training and savvy for consuming, criticizing, and conducting statistical analysis and require preparation for a variety of careers in the nonprofit, public, and private sectors. Future tasks may include appraising employee work activities, evaluating data analysis presented by interest groups and lobbyists, assessing program and policy outcomes, and designing their own research projects to assess program outcomes. What are the best methods for teaching Masters in Public Administration (MPA) students? Should instructors focus on teaching students to consume statistics or produce them? Should instructors rely on statistical programs to teach data analysis? And what text books will best support our efforts to prepare MPA students for the varied works lives ahead of them?

Here, we present five book reviews that focus on nine textbooks used in MPA programs throughout the United States. The reviewers draw from their own experiences teaching MPA students to highlight the strengths and weaknesses of the books under review. This set of reviews offers an assessment of some of the textbooks available to instructors and ideas for how to best use them to teach MPA students. Reviewers were invited to select books they use, or have used, in the classroom in order to provide an insightful review for JPART readers. We hope these reviews will be useful to newly minted PhD’s prepping their first data analysis course as well as to more seasoned instructors looking to incorporate new materials in the classroom.