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Guide to Issue Brief Research Process

Contents

Preliminary Steps

Read Research Guide

1. Read Research and Writing Guide and briefly map out how you understand the steps in the process and what information/content you will need to gather through these steps.  Become familiar with the components of the issue brief which you will complete including:   Start with Research Guide Part 1 - Starting
• Goal Statement
• Scope of the Problem 
• Past Policy Milestones
• Current Policy and Programs
• Policy Options / Model Programs
• Key Organizations
• Glossary of Terms 
• Bibliography 

Develop Research Work Plan

1. Hold group meeting to map out Research work plan.  This takes about an hour.
• Review topics that each researcher will address.
• Address questions raised by reading of the research guide.
• Map out (1) the steps in the sequence for the research work plan and (2) what content to focus on during each step.
• Flesh out a work plan according to the calender.  In our example, we are using a four-week timeline.
2. During this meeting/process, each researcher can better clarify the initial topic for research and the issue brief(s). This topic may be further refined by the initial research and input from the community partners. In our case, we are doing the following:
1. Recycling (Princeton/NJ focus):  Thatcher
2. Chronic Homelessness (New Brunswick/NJ focus):  Mike
3. Family Homelessness (Trenton/NJ focus):  Mike and Becky
4. School Readiness (Princeton/NJ focus):  Sarah
5. Low-Income Energy Assistance (Meadville/PA focus):  Marisa
6. Out-of-school Time (NJ focus):  Ariane

Set-Up Wiki Pages for Issue Overview & Brief(s)

1. Subsequent to the meeting, we set-up wiki pages with issue overview page template and links to initial local, state, and national issue brief pages.  We will be using these wiki pages to keep notes throughout our research process. Researchers are also encouraged to use a word processing or other online note-taking file (such as bookmarking) to record all useful links and sources.
• See How to Use This Wiki
• We should be using Delicious (social bookmarking) for this as well.
2. It's important to set out and adhere to a set of minimal research standards, which include a journalistic approach of utilizing interviews (phone and/or in person) to complete the research process.  Getting information from issue 'experts' is a key strategy for effectively describing and distinguishing between options, and the quality of briefs may suffer if this part of the process is not included.  In our four-week timeline, we are specifying the following benchmarks:
• Internet Research (with identification of sufficient organizations and sources to document in Information Sources of wiki)
• Library Search (literature review)
• 2+ Phone Interviews
• 1+ In-Person Interview 
• Completion of all components of the issue brief template 

Research Steps

(1) Goal Statement

Define/refine a broad goal statement to shape your research.  This may need to be done in tandem with the research, if you don't have a clear idea of how to frame the research.  A common issue is that the research starts with a basic topic (such as food policy council) that is actually the response to what can be framed as a public policy / research issue (such as what is a structure by which a community/town can ensure that its members have access to nutritious locally grown foods).

(2) Key Organizations

Slides for this presentation.

• Identify Key Organizations via Google searches
• See Research Guide Part 8 - Key Organizations and Individuals
• Search for relevant organizations.  Try google searches using key words connected to your issue area. Use different words and terms that capture the issue.   You may also want to use search terms such as 'issue brief _____ [insert topic]', 'program evaluation ____ [insert topic]' 'policy paper ____ [insert topic]' and so on.  
• Once you have a lead (e.g., an organization, paper, or so on), it's helpful to keep following its links and connections (whether online or through other means).  For example, for a non-profit organization that seems to be focusing on the issue, try to find if it has any research papers, organizational partners, advocacy/legislative efforts, board or staff members, and so on.  If you found a good paper, check its bibliography for other key authors, texts, and so on.  Keep following the links (like a journalist would).
• Keep a running set of notes, identifying the key issues, language and so on.  You'll return to this later (especially when you need to define the options, which is often the hardest part).  Keeping good notes early on what you learn will make this easier.
• You might start with an organization you know of (from your own work or your school's) but you want to make sure you're not missing key information.  Do searches with national directories of governmental organizations, agencies and funding streams.  Sites to use for this include:
• USA.gov : The U.S. Government’s Official Web Portal

  On the usa.gov site, you can access information about all aspects of the United States’ government, including on the federal, state, local, and tribal level.  This includes an A-Z Agency Index, which allows you to find relevant governmental agencies and offices.  You may research by topic, using a comprehensive listing (sidebar).  This doesn’t stop at federal level information (though that may be more prevalent); on the local level, you can look up in-person service centers, majors, statistics and more.

• USAspending.gov: USAspending.gov, a re-launch of www.fedspending.org, provides this information to the public, as collected from federal agencies, in an easy to use website. The data is largely from sources: the Federal Procurement Data System, which contains information about federal contracts; and the Federal Assistance Award Data System, which contains information about federal financial assistance such as grants, loans, insurance, and direct subsidies like Social Security.

• See others on the Information Sources of the Research Guide/PolicyOptions Wiki here:  http://policyoptions.pbworks.com/Information+Sources+-+General

• You can also search for other non-profits that specialize in the issue area.  Try starting at:
• Guidestar:  http://www2.guidestar.org/
• Idealist:  http://www.idealist.org/
• You can do keyword, subject, and other searches in these directories, and pull up based on national, state and local definitions.
• The team should set a benchmark for the research to ensure each researcher is being thorough.  For example:
• Our goal is for each researcher to populate the page on their wiki with several organizations on multiple levels (national, state, and local).  In addition, each researcher should identify 3+ organizations (1 national, 1 state, 1 local) that they want to contact by phone to conduct a journalistic 'expert' interview.  This interview will be a way of 'fact checking' your approach (goal statement, key organizations to start).

(3) Scope of the Problem

• Gather relevant data on Scope of the Problem via Google searches
• See Research Guide Part 4 - Scope of the Problem
• Hopefully, you already started this during your initial research (above step).  Here, it may be helpful to search more for:
• Non-profits that focus on the issue (nationally, in your defined state/county and town).  Again, you might try these sites to start:
• Guidestar:  http://www2.guidestar.org/
• Idealist:  http://www.idealist.org/
• Foundations or philanthropies:
• The Riley Guide to Nonprofits, Foundation, and ThinkTanks:  http://www.rileyguide.com/nonprof.html
• Deliberative Democracy models/papers:
• Search for related documents at http://everydaydemocracy.org 
• Search for papers/forum guides at http://nifi.org
• Relevant news articles, especially to identify current events, trends, and data.  Some sources for this information may include:
• ERIC Digest (which is available at many libraries) or 

(4) Interview "Experts" & "Practitioners"

1. Identify and contact "issue experts" at key organizations to help you identify Policy Options and Model Programs, and additional experts or organizations you should contact.
• See Research Guide Part 2 — Interviewing Issue Experts 
• NOTE:  Student researchers have commented that contacting someone who is knowledgeable about the issue early on, even if s/he doesn't fully understand the topic yet, is very helpful.  Contacting a direct service provider, for example, with whom the student researcher already has a relationship or to whom s/he can explain what the project is, can direct the researcher more quickly to good sources of information.  These conversations can also help point the researcher in the direction of other individuals, agencies, and sources of knowledge.  Student researchers especially found it helpful to ask these early sources about the challenges of their work (e.g., one researcher who was working on low-income heating assistance asked several service providers about the challenges of distributing this assistance, whose needs aren't being met, and so on.  She found that she learned key words as well as key information about the agency sources of assistance, types of assistance, and obstacles.)
2. Interview key experts.  Again, it's helpful to set out some benchmarks for interviews (number or type).  

Additional Notes on the Implementation of the Research Plan

How much time is this taking

Preliminary Meeting:  1 hour

An initial meeting laid out the concept and purpose for policy research, introduced student researchers to other examples, the PolicyOptions Wiki, and the issue brief concept and template.

Working Meeting 1:  1.5 to 2 hours

Research team and advisors (students and faculty) met to discuss topics and process.  A calendar for a four-week process was created that met particular benchmarks for the quality/quantity of research.  

Stage 1 Research (See example below for week 1):  Reported at 10-15 hours per student researcher

Each individual student researched primarily via Internet and also through key phone contacts (interviews) to develop a grasp of the issue, Key Organizations & Individuals, Information Sources (on each level of local/state/national), and draft data for Scope of the Problem.  In our case we used a week, but this could be broken over a longer period if done in the context of a semester assignment.

Working Meeting 2:  3 hours (1 hour per researcher)...this could also be done in a one-to-one setting

Each student researcher presented their working knowledge of the issue and results of initial research.  This included reviewing each researcher's Information Sources, Key Organizations and Individuals, data for Scope of the Problem.  

Key issues at this stage to keep in mind for researchers and advisors are:

• Working on the PolicyOptions Wiki is important, and it is generally confusing at first.  Students have to input information and links in several locations (different pages) that are not linked on one page.  For example, a student needs to enter Key Organizations on three pages—local, state, and national.  Using this meeting or coaching as a time to show where to put information can be helpful, and it is time consuming.
• We encourage student researchers to also use post-it notes or other ways to keep track of their internalization of knowledge.  Typically, researchers will find instructive papers (such as white papers or policy papers) that have been developed by others.  It's helpful to read these, but in order not to get bogged down or overwhelmed, researchers can utilize their own 'tree' of research to make sense of this information. For example, a researcher may want to keep post-its or notes of the 'options' or 'model programs' that s/he is finding, then revisit those, grouping and clustering.
• Another reason that using PolicyOptions is important is that it can help researchers to identify gaps or holes in information.  For example, a researcher may find a really knowledgeable non-profit on the national level that then is linked to other policies and organizations.  But s/he may not then find any foundations, who may have other evaluation or analysis to share.  By using the wiki templates, researchers can keep track of what s/he have found.

Sample Calendar Work Plan — 4 Week Plan

This is for the example of Bonner Interns working on issue briefs. In this example, individual researchers will complete an issue brief in four weeks. You can modify it to fit your purposes. This is assuming they are spending a few hours a day (more or less, as needed) on the project.  (They are not working full-time on this assignment).  Others may modify it based on class or co-curricular meetings.