Home Graphing & Data Tools Policy Analysis Budget Trends Mixed Policy & Budget Data-Related Resources Policy Budget Crosswalk. Sortable Committee Table Committee Jurisdiction Tutorials Policy Tool Tutorial Budget Tool Tutorial Chart Tutorial Graph Examples Scenarios Rise & Decline of Issues, A Rise & Decline of Issues, B Institutional Capacity

Scenario 1 Part A.1: Rise and Decline of Issues in Congress
Detailed Example

Replicating the Rise and Decline figures in Baumgartner's paper is relatively easy. However, because the analysis tool does not allow analysis by percent of days of hearings, we will replicate the data by simply analyzing issue attention as the percent of total hearings.

The final charts produced using the Policy Analysis Tool:

The final chart produced using the Policy Agendas Analysis tool.

The final chart produced using the Policy Agendas Analysis tool if we had selected the 'new' issues.

Compare to the original charts:

Chart showing the decline of old issues --Government Operations, Public Lands and Water Management, and Defense Issues--in congress

Chart showing the rise of new issues --Environment, Health, and Law, Crime, and Family Issues--in congress

(Click on the thumbnails to view the larger picture.)

Step 1

Following the link "Level II: Query" above will open up the query form (shown below).

Step 2

Select the dataset of interest. In this case, "Congressional Hearings" is already selected, since it is set as the default dataset
Next, check the boxes in the form for "Defense", "Government Operations", and "Public Lands and Water Management". Hold down the crl key while clicking the mouse to select multiple subotpics.
Then, select the option for "Congressional Sessions". Select "80" from the "From" drop-down list and "102" from the "To" drop-down list.
Since we want to see the results as a percent of all hearings, select the option to analyze the data as a "percent of all activity."
Finally, click the "Search" button.

Step 3

	Clicking the "Search" button, produces a bar chart showing the percent of hearings dedicated to each of the topics we selected, namely Defense, Government Operations, and Public Lands and Water Management.

	Below the chart is a table of the results. Clicking on the values in the table will produce of list of the hearings for that particular issue in that particular congress.

Step 4 (Optional)

You can alter the appearance of the chart by right-clicking anywhere on the chart. This will produce an menu of options.
The picture to the left shows the results of mousing-over the "Gallery" options.
The "Gallery" option allows us to change the display from bars to lines (or any of the other options shown).
For more information on altering the chart appearance, please see the Chart Tutorial.

The final chart and the original chart are shown below.

Final Chart

Original Chart

The rising issues final chart and original chart are shown here for comparison.