ABSTRACT
Every aspect of research design needs serious attention if the results are to be valid, reliable, and actually useful. Some facets of the research process, such as choosing a case or a sample, regularly receive a lot of attention, even though these familiar problems only become more complex with experience.2 Some researchers habitually rely on analytical concepts developed by others as if the mere fact of prior use were sufficient evidence that the concepts were theoretically sound, appropriately operationalized, and valid for the problem at hand. Those with more sophistication offer full explication of key analytical concepts-a process both described and modeled by the late Steven Chaffee (1991) in his excellent-but outof-print-book, Explication. Even those who explicate concepts, however, may assume that the subject matter of their research does not need the same treatment, as if it were obvious. In some cases this may be so, or becomes so following a literature review discussing the subject of the research prior to a discussion of the methods used, but in other areas it is not. The research subject of information policy is a premiere example of a research subject that does not have a clear identity unless the explication task is specifically taken up.
