Gone Fishing

Abstract

Every data-gathering effort is a story, often a horror story from the perspective of those that created it. This chapter presents a historical tale of the creation and logic behind the Comparative Agendas Project (CAP) Master Codebook. The CAP is in reality a network of many projects aimed at classifying political agendas according to the policies they address. However, with no central administration or common source of funding the original coding framework experienced noticeable drift based on the context of each project. To harmonize the data across projects resulted in the creation of a common Master Codebook that was only possible with the support of the CAP community. This chapter further discusses the limitations of the CAP data. Ultimately the master coded CAP data presents a common way of understanding policy attention and provides the framework for more detailed work in and outside the CAP community.