Graduate Student Researcher (California Policy Lab)

The California Policy Lab seeks a graduate student researcher for Spring 2019 who would help the Lab develop a strategy for developing indices to measure social policy in California. The GSR would be supervised by CPL Executive Director Evan White. The GSR would require occasional meetings at CPL’s UC Berkeley offices, but could otherwise work remotely.

CPL’s mission is to improve the lives of Californians by generating evidence that transforms public policy. We do this by forming lasting partnerships between government and California’s flagship public universities to harness the power of research and administrative data. We work on California’s most urgent problems, including homelessness, poverty, crime, and education inequality.

Our many partnerships provide us with a unique cross-sector vantage through which to understand public policy in California’s communities. By virtue of our many partnerships, we also have access (currently, for specific projects) to many data sources that offer compelling insights into important social or economic trends. We believe there may be potential to propose the creation of public-facing indices that are constructed using privately held data.

Several indices, indicators, and dashboards already exist. Examples include the state fiscal health index, the county women’s well-being index, and upcoming California Dream Index. These indices have the potential to offer insights about particular policy problems or particular regions of the state.

We seek a GSR to develop our strategy on indices. Among the questions we seek to answer are:

What benefits do current policy-related indices provide to policymakers, journalists, advocates, government agencies, and other stakeholders?

How do those benefits differ by index, and what are the attributes of successful indices? What does it take to get an index to be adopted and used?

What is the current landscape of California-based indices? Are there gaps that need filling in the areas in which CPL works?

What benefits and costs accrue specifically to CPL in creating and maintaining an index?

What data does CPL have access to (or could we potentially gain access to) that would add value to existing policy conversations?

What specific indices should CPL consider creating, if any?

The final deliverable of this project will be a proposed strategy for adoption by CPL. We are open to many possible recommendations, including that we construct several different indices, or none at all. Depending on the outcomes of the first phase of the project, we may ask the GSR to help develop a prototype CPL index.

The primary tasks for the GSR will be literature review, interviews with existing index creators, review of publicly and privately available data, and the drafting of a strategy. The GSR may also help develop a prototype index, which would include data wrangling, data cleaning and analysis, and data analysis. These latter skills are preferred but not required.

CPL is seeking candidates who have experience in strategic consulting and the ability to work independently without significant supervision. We want candidates who are excited about the potential for indices to inform the policy debate, and who can also look clear-eyed at their potential costs and disadvantages. We will consider candidates with all backgrounds, but this seems well suited for a student at GSPP, Haas, or the I-School.