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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. As such, it shares with some other research approaches (e.g., action research) an allegiance to the values of social responsibility and community empowerment. Common advocacy outcomes to which research may contribute include lobbying, testifying, pursuing a lawsuit, and seeking media coverage to raise public awareness. Nonadvocacy research may also produce findings useful to advocates, but advocacy research has this goal as its raison d'ětre.
This entry focuses on advocacy at the organizational level and on the role of qualitative research in furthering this effort. 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. The goals may be immediate and time focused (e.g., closing a nuclear power plant) or diffuse and ongoing (e.g., monitoring child welfare agencies).
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. Pursuing formal research can also entail the involvement of research ethics or other institutional committees having jurisdiction over the researcher, the study sites, and/or the study populations.
The following sections provide an overview of advocacy research, including the stakeholders involved and the role of the researcher, useful applications of qualitative methods, strategies to increase trustworthiness and rigor, and ethical issues.
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, and (3) those being advocated against. The latter are often represented by entrenched vested interests such as large corporations and governments. Such powerful entities may be the direct target of advocacy, or they may exist as obstacles to achieving desired goals, for example, providing low-cost medications for AIDS patients or saving the earth's environment from the effects of global warming. In instances where the first two stakeholder groups (a and b) overlap, affected communities or groups have organized to advocate for themselves. At other times, professional advocacy organizations may act on behalf of vulnerable groups such as abused children and the homeless mentally ill.
In this context, advocacy researchers may already be members of stakeholder groups, but they more often come from the “outside” (e.g., academic settings, professional research organizations). Usually part of a team effort, researchers contribute methodological expertise and produce findings that can be used by advocacy groups and their allies, with the latter including attorneys, politicians, scientific experts, and public relations representatives.
Like other forms of applied research, advocacy research is best viewed as a means to an end. Issues of public interest are paramount, including environmental hazards, inadequate services (e.g., health care, social services, sanitation, affordable housing), and corruption or mishandling of public resources.
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