Is Florida Really that Interesting? State Geographic Bias in Public Administration Research

Abstract

The authors examine whether there are geographic biases in public administration research. They use a dataset of 557 research articles from top public administration journals in which specific state names appear in the title or abstract. Findings suggest that not only is a mass of public administration research concentrated in four states (Florida, California, New York, and Texas), but specific thematic topics and policy areas are associated with each of those states. In general, this suggests that authors need to consider if continuing these trends creates a blind spot for research bias in the field, where the collective understanding of a specific topic is disproportionately influenced by data from a single state. The broad implications are that how states serve as a research setting should be actively considered by authors.

Inclusionary Emergency Management Planning: Floridian Emergency Management Planners’ Orientations and Perceptions

“…As such, what we can infer from this base-line exploration is that what was observed among the population sampled may be observed among the broader state population of emergency management planners; future studies with more representative samples must be completed to make such a statement (Battaglia 2008; Etikan, Musa, and Alkassim 2016; Rivera 2019b; Yin 2018). Third, this study might also be limited in relation to the exceptional nature of Florida in relation to emergency management (Fowler and Fox 2023).…”

Does sticking close to home make for better research? In‐state authorship and citation rates in public administration journals

“…Finally, we are also concerned that other factors related to the individual articles may influence its citation count; specifically, articles written about trendy topics may be cited more and/or more likely to be published in top journals. Further, it is possible that some authors are writing about issues in specific states that they happen to reside, so they are passively benefitting from their research interest, and not inside status (i.e., Fowler and Fox 2022). In order to address this, we coded article abstracts to isolate thematic, policy, and methodological factors using a three‐step method.…”

“…Not only does there appear to be some level of confinement of the space between knowledge producers and knowledge users (Abramo et al 2020), but research from richer regions of the world receive significantly higher focus and citation rates (Meijaard et al 2015). For instance, the four U.S. states with the largest GDPs appear to be oversampled in public administration research, particularly when it comes to some specific thematic and policy research areas (Fowler and Fox 2022), but this work does not indicate if these patterns impact citation rates or research quality. Finally, it is also worth noting that several studies find that journal prestige is among the most important factors affecting citation rates, as consumers of research often look to journals as an indicator of quality (e.g., Callaham, Wears, and Weber 2002;Vanclay 2013).…”

“…For instance, recent scholarship, using public administration as a case study, indicates that four states in the United States tend to be the focus of about half of single-state studies in the field (Fowler and Fox 2022). This would suggest that there is an over-production of research conducted in a few states and an under-production in many other states, leading to potential biases in the collective knowledge of the field as many states create distinct socio-political, economic, and institutional settings.…”

Exploring Accountability Choices in Service Contracts for Collaborative Public Safety Services Provision

“…Third, it provides practical insights for intergovernmental contract management and accountability by underscoring the contractual safeguards chosen for collaboration across various directions and service types. Lastly, it seeks to reduce the geographical bias in empirical public administration research dominated by studies on governments from California, Florida, Ohio, New York, and Texas (Fowler and Fox 2023), by presenting empirical evidence from Iowa, a small Midwestern state.…”