Assignment 1: Identifying problems

In this assignment you are asked to prepare for a class discussion on this question:

What are the two most important problems government should address? How do you know? Provide data and evidence (go to the library!). Prepare to share with class.

This is both a brainstorming exercise and a research assignment, designed to help you start to think about public problems that interest you, and to introduce you to some of the research tools available to you in the library.

1. To prepare for this discussion, take out a notebook (you should keep a notebook solely devoted to the research and group work in this class) and list all the problems that deserve a solution. Be creative, and let your mind go wherever you want! (What is a problem? Use your own sense of what a problem is--or consult a dictionary.)

2. After you've made this list, make two columns in your notebook. Label one column "problems government can do something about" and "problems that non-government organizations should handle." In this case, non-governmental organization means businesses, charities, and the like--any organization that is not in government.

3. Within the "government" column, decide on two important problems. You may decide that they are not the most important problems in the world, but they are problems about which you care deeply and that you would like to contribute to solving.

4. Next, before doing any research, write down how you know that these are problems. At this point, rely on your intuition? What evidence can you bring to the discussion? For example, I might believe that a really important problem is traffic in the Triangle. How do I know? Because I had to sit through three lights yesterday at an intersection. This isn't really scientific data, but my sense is that traffic is not a problem just for me--indeed, others told me horror stories, before I moved here, of the traffic jams on I-40 (another bit of evidence). Write down all evidence that you can think of that proves that this is a problem.

5. Having done this, now is the time to begin to collect evidence that this is a problem. You need to collect evidence from solid sources, not just from the N&O or random web pages. The better sources will be academic or professional journals, government, reports, and the like. My favorite databases for this sort of information are as follows, listed by whether they are accessible through the NCSU libraries (http://www.lib.ncsu.edu) , or through any web browser.

NCSU Libraries

The following are listed at http://www2.lib.ncsu.edu/browsesubjects/?subject=79&tab=databases. This is not and exclusive list!

• Academic Search Premier (Ebsco): An excellent full-text databases of popular and academic sources.
• Stat USA (must be used at the library)--an amazing amount of statistical information, mostly from government sources
• Lexis-Nexis Statistical -- statistical data
• Lexis-Nexis academic -- government, news, law, and other information.
• CQ Electronic Library -- material from Congressional Quarterly: a great source for understanding what ideas are being discussed in Congress .
• PAIS International -- Often finds material not indexed in other sources.
• Google scholar (http://scholar.google.com): You can use this off campus, but if you log into the library using your Unity ID, you can run a version of Google scholar that links to articles you can read from NCSU libraries--this is very handy.

Free sources

• THOMAS at the Library of Congress: Allows you to see bills, debates in the Congressional Record, and similar legislative information.
• www.findlaw.com: This site allows you to search federal and state laws and regulations. Use the For Legal Professionals tab: it gives you many more resources, and you don't really have to be a lawyer to use it!
• Google -- This is OK, but you will get a lot of junk if you are doing serious research. Narrow your search to academic sources by putting site:.edu after any search, such as (without quotation marks) "traffic congestion site:.edu." You can narrow it to non profits and interest groups by using site:.org. Always use caution when using this site, or other general search engines. I would estimate that 90% of the results you get will be worthless, but the 10% can be really good.

Please be prepared to share suggestions about other information sources! And don't go crazy on this yet--just gather enough information to confirm that someone thinks that your problem is a real problem with real consequences, and that some solutions to the problem are out there.