The Center on Regional Politics

Temple University’s Center on Regional Politics (CORP) provides elected federal, state, and local officials and private sector and non-profit leaders within the five-county region (Bucks, Chester, Delaware, Montgomery, and Philadelphia) with a forum to seek consensus on policies to improve the quality of life and economic opportunities for residents of Southeastern Pennsylvania. CORP’s mission is to provide the neutral ground and intellectual resources that a university can offer to encourage and support interaction among leaders throughout Southeastern Pennsylvania, with the goal of developing evidence-based policies that respond to the region’s needs and promote its broad civic and economic interests. As indicated by its name, the center has as a special focus on the politics of public policy, or identifying the most promising practical strategies to achieve optimal policy results. The center does not advocate or lobby for specific policy measures but provides the region’s leaders with options and recommendations for addressing issues that incorporate assessments of both policy impact and political feasibility. Toward this end, the center produces and sponsors policy research and conducts educational seminars, legislative briefings, quiet discussions, and open forums to improve public understanding of problems and opportunities confronting the region and to encourage collaboration among leaders across partisan lines, economic sectors, and jurisdictional boundaries. The center will work cooperatively with other organizations with public policy missions to maximize the efficient use of scarce resources for the overall benefit of the region.

Institute for Survey Research

Founded in 1967, Temple University Institute for Survey Research is one of the oldest and most prestigious academic survey research centers in the U.S., with more than 50 years of experience conducting national, state, and local surveys, statistical research, focus group research, needs assessments, and program evaluations.

They collaborate with faculty and other researchers around the country on surveys and evaluations across a broad range of fields, topics and populations.

Pennsylvania Policy Database Project

The Pennsylvania Policy Database Project is a free, online resource that provides access to more than 160,000 state and news media records and enables users to trace and analyze with a few mouse clicks the history of public policy in the Commonwealth since 1979. Designed for easy use by educators, students, researchers, policy makers, news reporters, and the general public, it is the first comprehensive state policy database of its kind.

The project was built by Temple University and five other universities with the support and cooperation of the Pennsylvania General Assembly. Also participating were Pennsylvania State University, Carnegie Mellon University, the University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania State University Harrisburg, and the University of Pennsylvania.

The Pennsylvania project is modeled on the national Policy Agendas database, which allows users to track and analyze federal policy since 1946. Created by political scientists Frank R. Baumgartner and Bryan D. Jones and funded by the National Science Foundation, the national project is housed at the University of Texas. Similar databases are under construction in a dozen foreign countries at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.