This course is available for PhD students. Degree seeking students other than PhDs may register with instructor approval. This course is designed to provide practical applications of theory-driven research designs for quantitative methods ranging from experiments to survey research to multi-method, multi-model approaches and hybrid methods such as program evaluation and performance measurement. There is no single perfect research design – instead, each must be tailored to the problem, resources, tools, questions, and data at hand. Students will develop a grant proposal for a project of their choice, and in the process, gain concrete skills in addressing threats to validity, justifying design choices, and developing meaningful data and graphical analytic presentations for different types of data, as well as becoming more informed about the role of these issues in the broader profession historically, ethically, politically, and in terms of the general public and society (public-intellectual work).