advocacy research

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advocacy research One kind of descriptive policy research, carried out by people who are deeply concerned about certain social problems, such as poverty or rape. Their studies seek to measure social problems with a view to heightening public awareness of them and providing a catalyst to policy proposals and other action to ameliorate the problem in question. Occasionally, advocacy research studies bend their research methods in order to inflate the magnitude of the social problem described, and thereby enhance the case for public action to address the issue. See Neil Gilbert 's article: ‘Advocacy Research and Social Policy’, Crime and Justice (1997)
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