Carrying out research for policy and advocacy work

How can you effectively influence decision makers to change laws, regulations or policies? How can your idea to improve an issue or problem be adopted by those in power? If you are involved in law reform or policy work, then this free course, Carrying out research for policy and advocacy work, is for you. Whether you are employed as a policy officer or carrying out voluntary work, this course will explain how to present clear and effective evidence to support your proposals. It will explain how to design, carry out and present research to support your policy project.This OpenLearn course is an adapted extract from the Open University course W360 Justice in Action.

• 1 What is policy research?
• 2 Research ethics
• 2.1 What are the most important ethical rules?
• 2.2 Research ethics in practice
• 3 Research methodology
• 3.1 Research methods
• 3.2 A research plan
• 4 Carrying out empirical research
• 4.1 Literature review
• 4.2 Freedom of information requests
• 4.3 Designing surveys
• 4.4 Carrying out research interviews and focus groups
• 4.5 Documentary research
• 5 Analysing the data
• 5.1 Statistical analysis
• 5.2 Thematic analysis
• 5.3 The importance of values
• 6 Writing the report
• 6.1 Presenting quantitative and qualitative data