Build a career on rigorous public-policy evidence.

Find a thesis question that matters

One of the harder problems in graduate work is finding a research question that is both important and tractable. The open questions page is a curated index of ~70 unresolved questions across civic policy — each tied to a specific evidence gap, each with a path to a tractable study. They are sourced from our own evidence syntheses, so they are also questions that someone who reviewed the literature actually thinks is open.

Start with a domain you care about — public health, housing, criminal justice, education — and look for questions where the underlying intervention is something a single city could plausibly run. Those are the questions where a master's or PhD student can actually contribute new evidence.

Use the registry as data

The full registry is available as JSON and CSV under CC-BY 4.0. That makes it usable for several student-friendly projects:

• Meta-analyses — pull all entries for a given mechanism or policy area, code effect sizes consistently, and produce a quantitative synthesis. We cite student-led meta-analyses in our syntheses when they hold up.
• Methodological audits — study how reporting standards have shifted over time, or how often replications have confirmed original findings.
• Heterogeneity analyses — combine multiple entries to ask whether the same intervention works differently across contexts.
• Coursework projects — the data is clean enough to use in an introductory causal-inference or policy-evaluation class. Instructors are welcome to use it.

API documentation → · CSV download

Replicate an existing finding

Replication studies are an underrated way to start a research career. They train you in the methodology while contributing to the field. The registry currently tags 60+ findings as "open for replication" — strong single-site results that nobody has independently re-tested. We can help you identify a host city or partner organisation if you want to attempt one.

Open-for-replication findings → · Propose a replication →

Build a methodological portfolio

Whether or not your degree program emphasises empirical work, becoming fluent in the methodology of civic experimentation makes you more valuable to a wide range of employers — research firms, foundations, government innovation offices, applied economics teams. Three concrete steps:

• Work through the glossary — it covers most of the methodological vocabulary you'll see in applied empirical papers.
• Read three or four evidence syntheses in domains you don't already know. They show the field's conventions for summarising mixed evidence honestly.
• Use the sample-size calculator and the pilot templates as you sketch out a study design. The templates double as worked examples.

Get involved as a contributor

We accept volunteer contributions in three categories:

• Submitting entries — if you come across a rigorously evaluated civic experiment that isn't in the registry, send it in.
• Drafting evidence syntheses — if you have written or are willing to write a synthesis of a specific intervention class, talk to us before publishing elsewhere; the registry is a good venue.
• Joining the Technical Advisory Network — for students with formal training in causal inference or statistics, our advisor network reviews pilot designs from city teams. A few hours a month, real impact, real credit.

Submit an entry → · Apply to the advisor network → · Other ways to help →

Stay in the loop

The Dispatch is our regular newsletter — practitioner notes and patterns from the evidence base, written for people serious about how cities and agencies actually learn. Subscribing is the easiest way to stay connected without committing to anything.