Housing Issue/shortage in the City of Los Angeles

Please read my Memo that I attached and continue with the literature review on Housing Issues/problem in the city of Los Angeles. Below are the specific instructions for the literature review.

General instructions
There are a few different steps to this assignment:
1) Literature review, which informs the…
2) Causal theory / logic model, which informs the…
3) Researchable questions (which should be answerable with respect to the data you are collecting).
As you can see, you need multiple pieces to align here. This can be challenging, and you will have to work iteratively to ensure that your literature review connects to your causal theory and then to your researchable questions. I recommend sketching out these elements together and making sure they line up before writing up the individual sections.
Detailed instructions (make sure to complete all three parts!)
1) Students should conduct a literature review to inform the causal theory behind their research. Please aim for about 10 references. See discussion of how to write a literature review below.
2) The causal theory behind your analysis is very similar to the logic model approach discussed in my version of PUB 500. In case you took PUB 500 with another professor, I have attached further discussion of logic models. These models demonstrate how inputs and processes relate to outcomes and impacts; but most importantly, they outline the casual relationships between different elements of the program/organization and its impacts and outcomes on society. To be clear, logic models are a structure for combining multiple causal theories into a single format. They are a standard format as they are used often in program evaluation, grant writing, and especially in the non-profit sector (though increasingly in the public sector). However, if this structure doesn’t fit your project, you can discuss the causal theories instead. 🙂
You can either submit a logic model for your policy/program, or agency, or a focused discussion of the causal relationships which sit behind your research questions. You don’t need both! But you do need at least one. 🙂 Either way, you need to discuss the reasoning and evidence behind these relationships (this is the most important bit!). Ensuring that you have a clear theoretical model to test your statistical analysis against is critical to the research methods taught in this class.
3) On the basis of this theory, you will propose researchable questions. Researchable questions are different from research questions. Research questions are what you want to find the answer to. Researchable questions are what you can find the answers to. Researchable questions are practical, and have the potential to be answered with available data.
Note that you will likely revise the researchable questions later in the project. Iterative development is probably the best approach here.
(For Part 1) A quick note on how to write a literature review
Literature reviews for class projects should reference around 10 articles. This is just a rule of thumb for this class. 5 quality and relevant articles well-reviewed would be better than 15 slightly-related articles from non-academic sources and discussed in a haphazard fashion!
Literature reviews should focus on the academic literature, or reports written by politically-neutral think tanks or government agencies. Often studies include reference to news articles in their literature reviews. New articles are good for providing context to issues; however, they should not form the basis of a literature review.
One approach is to start with an “annotated bibliography”. Annotated bibliographies summarize each article in turn in terms of the main ideas, methods used, and a brief critical assessment of the article (what is good, what is missing, what questions remain, etc…).
However, an annotated bibliography is not sufficient to achieve the highest grades. Ideally students discuss the articles reviewed as a collective whole, rather than as stand-alone papers. This requires students to step back from the details and discuss the broader concepts and themes; what connects the articles and what is contrasting.
All of this takes some time! It is recommended to not leave this to the last minute, and to leave space between each of the steps. Please refer to some of the “best student papers” to get a sense of the kind of literature reviews others have done (this doesn’t mean they are ideal, just better examples!).

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