ABSTRACT
Growth and advancement in policy process studies depend not merely on developing better theories but also on developing better methods. Distinctions between deductive and inductive research are common in courses on research design for budding social scientists and data analysts of all types. In general, deductive research proceeds with theory as the main driver and develops conjectures about the world for testing with empirical research designed for confirmation or falsification. On the other hand, inductive research begins with data and observation, developing descriptions and explanations of the world from the ground up. Research design structures data collection and analysis to allow implicit or explicit comparisons across time, spatial units, or some theoretical baseline. When discussing the tools of analysis, it is easy to immediately jump to thinking about statistical models, qualitative comparative analysis, process tracing, network analysis, distributional analysis, and the like.
