ABSTRACT
Field research consists of talking to people, gathering raw data, or finding unpublished reports, memoranda, or other organizational documents. In dealing with some policy analysis problems, however, the people will have a mandate, time, and resources to conduct field research to gather directly relevant data. Document research includes reviewing relevant literature dealing with both theory and evidence, and locating existing sources of raw data. Five general categories of documents deserve consideration in the search for policy-relevant information systematic reviews and meta-analyses, scholarly work reported in journal articles, books, and dissertations, organizational sources such as publications and reports of think tanks, interest groups, and consulting firms, government publications and research documents and the popular press and blogs. When they exist, well-done systematic reviews of research on specific topics provide analysts with summaries of the best available evidence. Journals are usually run by editorial boards with a high percentage of academics with scholarly norms.
