New (to me) LaTeX package

Since moving to LaTeX, I have had many moments of "ohhh, that's how they made X look so nice."  The most recent is "pstricks."  This package lets you develop professional looking figures relatively easily. 

I am still working on getting the output to work in PDF rather than PS - but otherwise I am quite happy with it.  I think it looks much nicer than the standard STATA figure.

Here is an example image of a figure.  It only takes about 7 lines of code.

Revised Version of "Partner Choice in Emergency Management Collaboration"

Here is the revised version of the partner choice paper.  I have cleaned it up for submission but welcome any comments.

Midwest PS Association Paper - Evolution of Emergency Management Networks

This is my first actual social network analysis piece - and boy does it show.  This manuscript is not where I want it to be - especially in the development of testable propositions and the validity of the data.  However, I welcome any comments.

The paper is after the jump.

Practitioner-oriented Network Analysis Piece

I was asked to turn a presentation I gave at the Texas ASPA annual meeting into a short, practitioner oriented article for The Public Manager.  My graduate assistant and I put this together as a result.

The original submission draft is after the jump.

Nonprofit Collaboration Paper

Here is the promised paper on the resilience of collaborative partnerships between schools and nonprofits following Hurricane Katrina.  It is a project I have been working on with Angela Bies - also of the Bush School.  Now I am back to revise the Partner Choice paper for submission to Public Administration - the European journal.

From there it is on to my first papers with actual network level data - an informal, practitioner oriented piece solicited for The Public Manager and an academic piece for the Midwest/Political Network conferences.

Online LaTeX Software

LaTeX just keeps getting easier to use.  Today I came across an online tool for collaborative writing in LaTeX.  This works like Google Docs and similar services with which you can selectively invite people to specific projects (giving editing and/or viewing access), edit online, and view PDFs of the LaTeX code.  There is even easy integration of BibTeX.  I have not tested the figure integration processes, but they look simple. 

This removes the need from having a local install of MikTeX, etc.

Check it out at:  www.scribtex.com

New Paper on School District Collaboration with Nonprofits

I have just completed a draft of my paper (with Angela Bies) on Texas school district collaboration with nonprofits following Katrina and Rita.  Since this is co-authored, I want to wait a little before posting the draft here.  I will probably do so once we are comfortable enough with a draft for submission (we are hoping to submit by the end of the month).

This puts me a 2 papers in three weekends.  I guess I have to drop my expected productivity to 26 papers a year : p.

Online Survey of Texas School Districts

I am trying an online administration of the Texas school district survey for the first time.  So far (after about 1.5 weeks) we have a 6-8% response rate and have discovered about the same percentage of incorrect addresses.  We are fixing those and will complete wave one soon.  It looks like our online response rate is tracking at about half of the mail survey response rate.

I anticipate doing three waves online followed by a 2 or 3 waves by mail.  I really hope the online component can ease the survey process and reduce some costs.

I will keep everyone posted on the success of the online mode.

Publication Outlets - and abrupt change in strategy

Days before I finished the "partner choice in EM" paper before, the editors of the journal I targeted to publish it in stepped down.  Now I am trying to figure out where to send it after some more proofing.  Any ideas?

First Draft of a Paper on Partner Choice by Schools in Emergency Management

Here is the first draft of the paper I wrote last weekend on partner choice in emergency management contexts.  In particular, it focuses on how "non-disaster organizations" choose partners for emergency management purposes. 

It is my first paper fully in LaTeX so please be patient with my formatting.  I have most of the kinks worked out, but a few problems remain.  Overall, the paper is more descriptive than I typically publish - but I think this may be worth sending out (not to JPART, but there may be some interested outlets).  I guess this qualifies as SNA-related though not a formal SNA methodology.

I welcome any comments.

The text is after the jump

New Data on Texas School District Emergency Management Available

I have just released a new dataset of Texas school districts about 18 months after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

After the break, you can see the codebook with all of the descriptive statistics as well as a link to the data itself.

Welcome

Welcome to my Public Management research blog. In an era of social networking - whatever that means - it has fallen on each of us to publicize our own work. I have chosen to experiment with a blog as a means to get my research in front of interested people. I will post occasionally on proposal development and data collection, but anticipate focusing on the presentation of results of my public management research. Of course, everything here will be preliminary - but please feel free to comment. I hope this forum provides for an effective means of sharing research and getting productive feedback.

Hey... if only three people read a post it will be as many as my typical Midwest Political Science Association panel presentation.