Acknowledgements

Principal Investigators:

E. Scott Adler received a BA from the University of Michigan in 1988 and Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1996. He is currently Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Colorado.

John D. Wilkerson received his B.A. From Portland State University in 1984, his M.A. from the University of Arizona in 1988, and his Ph.D. from the University of Rochester in 1991. He is a Professor of Political Science at the University of Washington and directs the Center for American Politics and Public Policy (cappp.org).

Website:

John Wilkerson, content and day to day management
Barbara Macfadden and Adrien Lo, Website design and artwork, UW Educational Technology Services

Financial support:

This project would not have been possible without the generous support of National Science Foundation Grants no. 00880066 and 0111443 to University of Washington and no. 00880061 to University of Colorado. The findings of any research reported on this site are not necessarily endorsed by the National Science Foundation, University of Colorado , University of Washington or the Congressional Research Service.

Data resources:

The Library of Congress Thomas website (http://thomas.loc.gov)
Frank Baumgartner, Bryan D. Jones and John Wilkerson, The Policy Agendas Project
McKibbin, Carroll R. ICPSR Study - 7428. Biographical Characteristics of Members of the United States Congress, 1789-1979
Elaine K. Swift, Robert G. Brookshire, David T. Canon, Evelyn C. Fink, John R. Hibbing, Brian D. Humes, Michael J. Malbin and Kenneth C. Martis. Database of Congressional Historical Statistics
Charles Stewart III and Jonathan Woon. Congressional Committee Assignments, 103rd to 105th Congresses, 1993--1998
Keith Poole and Howard Rosenthal, Nominate scores of legislators

Research assistance:

We are grateful for the early project assistance of Professors Bryan Jones, Frank Baumgartner, Wendy Schiller, Greg Wawro, Jeff Talbert, and David Canon, and to Jeff Griffith and Stanley Bach of the Congressional Research Service. This project would also not have been possible without the assistance of scores of graduate and undergraduate research fellows at the University of Washington and the University of Colorado. Several of these former and current students deserve special acknowledgement.

University of Washington

T Jens Feeley was a meticulous project manager for the first 4 years.

Barry Pump developed valuable scraping tools for THOMAS
Nick Stramp is currently the primary data manager at the UW and exceptionally capable. Kevin Shotwell was instrumental in migrating the project from a bunch of excel files to a relational database with scripts to facilitate updating.
while Stephen Purpura and Loren Collingwood developed invaluable tools to facilitate automated topic classification.
Asaph Glosser, Sam Workman and Michelle Wolfe been capable database managers at different points in the project.

Heather Larsen, Ashley Jochim, Asaph Glosser and Shauna Fisher skillfully trained and supervised several generations of undergraduate research fellows. Several fellows in particular, deserve thanks, including David Roberts, Sean Freeder, and Chad Johnson.

University of Colorado

Dennis Still, Greg Young, Michael Berry. Lead research assistants responsible for coding training, data management, proofing protocols and coordinating coding standards with the University of Washington.

Jeff Howland – Responsible for writing the MACROS in both Word and Excel to organize the scanned text. Keith Edwards – Responsible for considerable bill coding.

Christa Watson – Responsible for scanning pages of the congressional record into digital format.

Laurel Harbridge – Responsible for coding and integrating additional data to the bills data sets.

Brittany Perry – Responsible for coding and proofing.

Inayah Cooley (now Hays), Cheryl Williams, Amy Budner, Rebecca Carr, Heather Wilson – coding, scanning, proofing and formatting

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Funding