PhD Student Jinah Yoo Awarded 2024 Student Paper Award from ASPA's Section on Korean Public Administration

SPAA PhD Student Jinah Yoo received the 2024 Student Paper Award (third place) from the American Society for Public Administration's Section on Korean Public Administration (SKPA) for her paper, "How Relative Performance Information Affects Citizens' Perceptions and Attitudes: Do Reference Points Matter?" 

The study comprises three survey experiments examining the influence of different presentations of benchmarks in academic performance reporting of U.S. schools. By utilizing 8th-grade students' reading achievement levels, this study investigated how various presentations of benchmarks shape citizens' perceived performance and their attitudes toward additional investment in teaching. The findings highlight that citizens utilize reference information comprehensively when judging school performance, underscoring the importance of providing various benchmarks to enhance the presentation of school performance. Additionally, citizens' attitudes toward additional investment were more reliant on the absolute level of performance metric rather than the different types of benchmarks.

SKPA's student paper award recognizes graduate students whose papers are accepted for presentation, or graduate students who will present papers, on East Asia-related topics at the ASPA Annual Conference. Selected papers are honored with certificates and scholarships aimed at nurturing and recognizing emerging talents in the domain of East Asian public administration research.