Methods for Policy Research: Taking Socially Responsible Action (Applied Social Research Methods)

Methods for Policy Research, Second Edition, by Ann Majchrzak and M. Lynne Markus, is a book about responsible and evidence-based policy decision making written for those interested in improving the decisions that affect people’s lives. It describes how to define policy research questions so that evidence can be applied to policy decisions, how to find and synthesize existing evidence, how to generate new evidence if needed, how to make acceptable recommendations that can solve policy problems without negative side effects, and how to describe evidence and policy recommendations in a manner that changes minds. The suggestions made throughout the book are based on the fundamental belief that evidence-based decision making is superior to decisions based purely on opinion, intuition, and emotion.