[1] In 1984, Nelson published the book Making an issue of child abuse: Political agenda setting for social problems.
[3] Nelson describes the development of child abuse as a social welfare issue from the 1874 creation of the New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children to the 1970s, using agenda-setting theory to understand how the issue was elevated by the media, state and local governments, and the United States Children's Bureau.
[5] The book focused on the implementation strategy of equal pay for equal work, which often relied on the idea of "comparable worth" to determine whether or not wage discrimination was occurring in a given area; Nelson and Evans argue that this policy paradoxically produces gains for working women while also increasing the power of technocratic evaluators who are tasked with judging comparable worth.
[1] In 2003 Nelson published The Concord handbook: How to build social capital across communities with Linda Kaboolian and Kathryn A.
[8] In 2004, Nelson won the Harry Scoville Award for academic and leadership accomplishments from the Los Angeles Chapter of the American Society for Public Administration.