Advocacy research

Advocacy research

Advocacy research is intended to assist in advocacy, that is, efforts to assemble and use information and resources to bring about improvements in people’s lives.

Advocacy groups typically address concerns about public health, social welfare, and public safety. Their size and scope of interest can range from a neighborhood group protesting the closure of a local playground to multinational coalitions organized to fight for the rights of the disabled.

Given the relative scarcity of finances and expertise, few advocacy groups engage in empirical research, instead getting their information through informal interviews, documents and records, legal action, and previous research.

 The distinction between information gathering and research can be blurry, but the latter refers to the deployment of systematic methods using extant research designs and modes of data collection and analysis.

 

Stakeholders and the Role of Research in Advocacy:

 The stakeholders in advocacy include three interrelated groups or entities:

1: those being advocated for

2: those doing the advocating

3: those being advocated against.

 

Qualitative Methods in Advocacy Research:

 Although the goals of advocacy research maybe furthered using a variety of methods, some qualitative approaches are a better fit than are others. With ethnography, the researcher observes organizations and/or communities to understand the behaviors, interactions, and tacit understandings that shed light on the problem being advocated against (or the goal being advocated for) as well as potential solutions.

Among types of qualitative data collection, focus groups and individual interviews provide valuable opportunities for individuals to be heard in their own words, and observation and field notes capture events in vivo. Documents, whether official records or personal diaries and journals, are also a valuable data resource, as are photographs and video recordings. Recent innovations, such as photovoice techniques and use of online web-based technologies, introduce new and often more accessible means of qualitative data collection.