Planning Grant for Multiple User Database on Historical Congressional Statistics, Chapel Hill, Fall 1991

由于立法程序的重要方面在短期内缺乏显著的变化，对国会和美国立法程序动态的研究受到阻碍。例如，虽然国会委员会制度的结构被认为是决定国会运作的重要因素，在过去的半个世纪里，委员会制度的结构变化很小，这使得分析委员会结构的影响很难用当代的数据来研究。为了弥补这一问题，国会学者越来越多地转向历史。具体来说，通过长期研究国会的变化，可以观察到关键概念和变量的更大变化。然而，问题是，在1950年之前，没有收集到有关国会许多方面的系统和可靠的数据。该奖项支持召开国会学者规划会议，研究开发一个关于国会结构、过程和组成的综合、多用户历史数据库的可行性。会议将邀请该领域的主要学者参加，并将就应收集的数据类型、综合数据库应采用的格式以及收集这些数据后可解决的问题类型寻求协议。当完成这个项目将提供一个更好的理解数据的需求和机会在这个重要的政治科学领域。

Research on Congress and on the dynamics of the legislative process in the United States is hampered by the lack of significant short term variation in important aspects of the legislative process. For example, although the structure of the congressional committee system is believed to be important in determining the operation of Congress, the fact that the structure of the committee system has changed only very little over the past half century makes analysis of the effects of committee structure difficult to study using contemporary data. To compensate for this problem congressional scholars have turned increasingly to history. Specifically, by studying congressional change over longer periods of time it is possible to observe greater variation in key concepts and variables. The problem, however, is that systematic and reliable data have not been collected on many aspects of Congress for the years prior to about 1950. This award supports a planning conference of congressional scholars to study the feasibility of developing a comprehensive, multi-user, historical data base on congressional structure, process and composition. The conference will involve the leading scholars in the field and will seek agreement on the types of data that should be collected, the format a comprehensive data base should take, and on the types of questions that could be addresses if these data were collected. When completed this project will provide a much better understanding of the data needs and opportunities in this important area of Political Science.