Appendix C: Doing Policy Research

You’ve probably done a lot of research in your life.  For many classes, you’ve been asked to locate high quality, academic sources.  This usually means searching out peer-reviewed journal articles and books.  Those kinds of sources are great–they’re the gold standard of academic research–but policy research often involves different types of sources and utilizes different research skills.  With policy research, you’ll still be looking for high quality sources, but you will likely be consulting government documents, media coverage, and material produced by interest groups, think tanks, or political parties rather than peer-reviewed sources.

The first step in conducting policy research once you have a topic in mind is to identify what level of government is primarily responsible for the policy in which you are interested.  Is this a national (federal) policy, a state policy (and, if so, in which state(s)?), or a local policy?

The second question to ask is which venue is involved.  Is this policy primarily shaped by legislatures, the executive branch, or the courts?  If you don’t yet know enough about the topic to be able to answer these two questions, I recommend starting with a quick Google search.  A Wikipedia page might be able to provide you with enough background information to determine what level and branch of government you’re dealing with.

Once you know what level of government and what government institution(s) are involved, you can start digging in to find sources that will help you learn more about the policy area.  Ultimately, you’re looking for answers to a few key questions that differ based on whether you are dealing with a specific policy that’s already in place or a policy proposal.  If you’re comparing multiple policies/proposals, you’ll need to answer these questions for both/all policies/proposals.

For an existing policy, you’ll want to find out the following information:

• What does the policy do? (and what problem was it designed to address?)
• When was it created and by who?
• What was the process behind its creation?
• Who was involved in its creation?
• Who supported it and for what reasons?
• Who opposed it and for what reasons?
• Has it been effective in achieving its goals?

For a policy proposal, you’ll want to find out the following information:

• What is the problem the proposal is trying to solve?
• What will the proposal do?
• What has happened to the proposal up to this point?
• Who supports the proposal and for what reasons?
• Who opposes the proposal and for what reasons?
• Is there evidence to suggest that it will be effective in achieving its goals?

Finding this information involves a bit of detective work.  Your initial searches will probably turn up some helpful information, but you’ll learn more if you take the time to dig in and really investigate the topic.

I think it is helpful to start by identifying the policy/proposal itself. If your policy is a law, find the law and the bill that created it.  If your policy is a regulation, find the regulation.  If it is a judicial decision, find the court opinion.  Thankfully, most of this information is available on-line, though it is possible that you’ll run into something that can only be found in person at a library.

Figure C.1: Kayla (Mortenson) Blank ‘19 researching state child welfare policies from the early 1900s in the Minnesota Legislative Reference Library in August 2018.

Here are some online resources you can use to find the actual text of the policy:

Federal Policy

• Federal legislation: https://www.congress.gov/ (includes both policy and proposed policy)
• U.S. Code: https://uscode.house.gov/
• Executive orders: https://www.federalregister.gov/presidential-documents/executive-orders
• Federal Regulations: Code of Federal Regulations (Annual Edition) | GovInfo
• Proposed Rules and Regulations: https://www.federalregister.gov/
• Supreme Court: https://www.oyez.org/
• Federal case law: https://case.law/

Minnesota Policy

• State legislation: www.leg.state.mn.us/leg/legis (includes both policy and proposed policy)
• Executive orders: https://mn.gov/governor/news/executiveorders.jsp
• Court opinions: https://mn.gov/law-library/search/?v:sources=mn-law-library-opinions
• State case law: https://case.law/

Once you have the policy in hand, you should read it (or at least try to read it) to get a sense of what it says.  This might be very difficult because most policy is written by lawyers and it is designed to fulfill technical requirements, not be readable and interesting. It’s okay if you don’t understand everything that you’re reading.  Do your best to get a feel for the policy.

The place where you locate the policy/proposal might also include some important information about the policy process (what happened or has happened so far) and the relevant actors (who supports it).  For example, if you’re looking up a bill on Congress.gov, you can look at the “actions” and “co-sponsors” tabs for this information.  You will want to pay special attention to the process the policy/proposal went through.  What were some of the key dates when action was taken?  Who took that action?  If you’re dealing with a legislative proposal, you should look for information about the committees where the bill was sent and any recorded votes.  If you’re dealing with a judicial decision, pay attention to the process the case took through the court system.

The next step to take is to find some contextual information about the policy/proposal that will help you understand more about the policy itself, the process it went through, and the implications of the policy.  I find that news sources are very helpful here.  Try a Google News search using some key words or the title of your policy.  Many newspapers have a firewall and so you may not be able to read the article.  However, our library has access to many newspapers, so if you find an article that looks very promising but you can’t access it, try accessing it through our library (you can ask a librarian for help with this if you aren’t sure how to do it.).

Another useful source at this point can be a Congressional Research Service report.  The CRS is a nonpartisan office that provides research assistance to Members of Congress.  CRS reports are archived here: https://crsreports.congress.gov/

For state level policies, the National Conference of State Legislatures sometimes has helpful summary reports that compare/contrast state policy on different topics: https://www.ncsl.org/research.aspx

Once you’ve learned a bit more about the policy through this background research, you can start to dig in to learning more about the actors and arguments. Start by trying to identify the primary supporters of the policy.  If you’re dealing with a legislative proposal, the bill’s sponsor(s) and cosponsor(s) will be important to identify.  Sometimes congressional supporters will hold press conferences or issue press releases where they talk about the bills they support.  These can be a useful source of information.  If there was a hearing about the bill, you might be able to find the names of people who testified in support of the proposal.  Often, those people represent interest groups or think tanks.  Newspaper articles can also provide clues about supporters through the people they choose to quote.

If you are dealing with a bureaucratic proposal or policy, the presidential (or gubernatorial)^[1] administration is clearly a supporter of the policy, since all regulations require administrative support.  You might also find public comments on proposed regulations that help you to identify supporters.

If you’re dealing with a court case, look at the actors involved in the case and any actors that might have contributed to the case by filing an amicus brief.

It’s not important that you locate every single person who has ever supported a policy, but you should be able to identify the most visible supporters.  Remember that some of these will likely be official actors like elected officials.  Others might be interest groups, think tanks, or political parties.

As you locate the names of supporters, you should also make note of the arguments they make in support of the policy.  You might notice that different actors emphasize different arguments, even when they are supporting the same position.  This can be very helpful information to include in your report.  Again, you don’t need a completely comprehensive list of all of the arguments that have ever been made, but you should be able to identify the most important 2-4 arguments in favor of the policy.

Now, repeat the process but for opponents of the policy (yes, it’s okay if you’re collecting information about opponents at the same time as you collect information about supporters…just don’t get them confused).  Finding opponents can sometimes be tricky because there isn’t a list of not-sponsors.  However, if you can locate transcripts (or video) of committee hearings or committee testimony, you might be able to find some clues (remember, this is detective work!).  Because newspapers try to be unbiased in their coverage of issues, they’ll usually try to include quotations from “both sides” of an issue.  Proposed regulations draw comments from both supporters and opponents.  Amicus briefs can be filed by groups representing both sides of the case.  Again, you’re looking to identify the most visible or vocal opponents and their top arguments.

If you have done a lot of digging and you just can’t find an opponent to the policy, remember that policy debates don’t always have two (or more) sides.  Sometimes everyone agrees that the policy is needed or a good idea, but that proposal is competing with other important proposals for agenda space or resources.  In other words, it’s not so much that other people oppose the policy, it’s just that it’s not a priority for them.  This can be helpful information to understand and include in your policy writing.

Finally, you’ll want to think about finding information about whether the policy works or, in the case of a policy proposal, how we would know if the policy works.  This is information about policy evaluation (see chapter 6 for more information about this process).  Finding research studies done at colleges and universities, think tanks, interest groups, or government agencies can be very helpful in establishing the effectiveness of a policy.  Occasionally, you’ll be able to find a peer-reviewed study of a program, but most of this type of information will be published on websites in reports that are not peer-reviewed.  However, as long as you are looking at credible websites and you consider and take into account their potential ideological biases, these sources are still great options.  Newspaper coverage can also provide some evidence of effectiveness.  Sometimes news coverage focuses on anecdotal evidence, so if you find that, you should be sure to also try to locate a more systematic assessment of the policy.

If you can find information about what the policy does, how and why it was created, who supports and opposes it, and how effective it is, you’ll have the information you need to write just about any type of document you can think of, from an issue brief to an op-ed to a policy history.  Remember, you aren’t going to find this information with your first Google search, but with a little effort and ingenuity (and maybe some help from a reference librarian!), you’ll be a policy detective in no time!

Figure C.2: Four steps to being a policy detective