Editorial Report on Public Administration Review, 2006–2011: A Global Graduate Seminar, a Privilege, and a Challenge
In this final wrap-up, PAR’s editor in chief, Richard Stillman, and managing editor, Jos C. N. Raadschelders, summarize the last six years of the journal’s objectives, contents, and accomplishments. The authors broadly discuss their editorial activities, past and present, and candidly and succinctly outline the ongoing challenges facing PAR in the future as the leading global journal for interdisciplinary public administration.
THE STUDY OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION IN THE UNITED STATES
The study of public administration in the United States is large in terms of the number of academic programmes, the range of journal publications, and the number of scholars. Its scholarship attracts attention from all over the globe. At the same time it is a public administration that is clearly embedded in a specific national culture, just as anywhere else. Three of the main challenges include the strong increase of quantitative-statistical methods, the decline of practitioner authors, and substantive specialization to the extent that generalists’ perspectives are losing ground. What you can’t calculate, you believe cannot be true What you can’t weigh, has no weight for you What you can’t cost, has no value for you.
The qualitative research interview
Background  Interviews are among the most familiar strategies for collecting qualitative data. The different qualitative interviewing strategies in common use emerged from diverse disciplinary perspectives resulting in a wide variation among interviewing approaches. Unlike the highly structured survey interviews and questionnaires used in epidemiology and most health services research, we examine less structured interview strategies in which the person interviewed is more a participant in meaning making than a conduit from which information is retrieved.