# 1 What is policy research?

Policy research involves researching an area of law and analysing the data in order to provide law or policymakers with evidenced-based recommendations for law reform or changes to regulations.

Figure 2 Many organisations carry out applied policy research

Policy research is often carried out within an academic setting, but is also an expanding and growing career sector. Policy and research officers are employed in many different organisations, including third-sector organisations such as charities and non-governmental organisations (NGOs), think tanks, consultancies and central and local government departments.

Activity 1 will enable you to discover more about the types of careers involving policy research.

## Activity 1 A day in the life of a policy researcher

You should allow yourself 25 minutes to do this activity.

Watch the following video from 13.28 – 18.54 in which Anvar Sarygulov, formerly Senior Research Fellow at the think tank Bright Blue (and now Research Grants and Programmes Manager at the Nuffield Foundation) discusses the type of work he does. Which part of his role do you find the most interesting, and why?

Video 1 Starting a career in policy research (Youtube link: The Open University is not responsible for external content)
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### Comment

Anvar discussed many different tasks that he carries out as a senior researcher, including research (qualitative research), data analysis, communication for different audiences, attending events and building a media profile. Which of these you find interesting will depend on your skills and interests. For example, communicating clearly to different audiences can be interesting, as you need to think about how best to communicate the message you want to give using plain English and relatable examples.

As Anvar discusses in the video, policy research can take many forms, and you will look at these later in the section. However, when starting your policy research, it is important to have a clear aim or research question which will then guide your research and analysis. You will learn more about this in the next two sections: research ethics and research methodology.

OpenLearn - Carrying out research for policy and advocacy work
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