Navigating the Path from Data to Policy

We know that policy should be based on data, but how do we go about transforming data into policy? What does the path from data to policy look like? And what does it mean for policy to be driven by data?

The purpose of this course is to help participants gain fluency in the fundamentals of policy research: understanding causality, combating biases in data collection and analysis, accounting for different interpretations of data, and—most importantly—how data can become policy (and why some policies are based on bad data or no data at all). The course will cover topics such as the opportunities for and limitations of identifying causal relationships in policy research, bias and ethics in data collection, and an overview of the most popular methods for statistical analysis in research today. Throughout the course, we will explore some of the key studies over the last decade that have had a meaningful effect on US policy.