Methods Guides

What are Methods Guides?

A Public Health Law Research Program “Methods Guide,” created by a leading public health law researcher from the PHLR Methods Core group, is designed to help public health professionals understand how to conduct research in law, and help legal professionals understand scientific methods. Methods Guides are organized by their applicability to the stages of a project, from the development of the research questions and design of the study, through the selection of measures and collection of data, to analysis and dissemination.

Crafting a Public Health Law Research Grant Proposal

Michelle Mello J.D., Ph.D., a member of the Public Health Law Research (PHLR) Methods Core, offers advice for writing a successful funding proposal.

What, How and Why? Using Logic Models for PHLR Research

Jennifer Ibrahim, Ph.D., M.P.H., a member of the PHLR "Methods Core," demonstrates the building of logic models in this podcast.

Creating a Public Health Law Database

Jennifer Ibrahim, Ph.D., M.P.H., a member of the PHLR "Methods Core," explains how to create a working database of public health law - a legal dataset - in this podcast.

What is Public Health Law Research?

Scott Burris, J.D., director of the center, explains in this podcast what public health law research is, and what kinds of research PHLR supports.

Building a PHLR Proposal Using the Scientific Method

Jennifer Ibrahim, Ph.D., M.P.H., a member of the PHLR "Methods Core," explains the importance and purpose of scientific rigor in this podcast.

Using Qualitative Methods in Public Health Law Research

Jennifer Wood, Ph.D., a member of the PHLR "Methods Core," describes how qualitative research can advance the goals of PHLR and provides examples of qualitative data collection methods.

Coding Case Law for Public Health Law Evaluation

This monograph explores the special considerations in coding text when the relevant legal materials are judicial decisions. The content of case law merits careful study not simply because judicial opinions reflect or respond to the law, but because they are the law. But, more than this, judicial opinions are detailed repositories that show what kinds of disputes come before courts, how the parties frame their disputes, and how judges reason to their conclusions.

Defining an Emerging Field: Public Health Law Research

In a paper published in the Milbank Quarterly, a multidisciplinary journal of population health and health policy, Temple University law professor Scott C. Burris and colleagues formally introduce the field as a new way of looking at the relationship between law and health.

Evaluating Public Health Law Using Randomized Experiments

The monograph describes how randomized trials, the methodology now accepted as the most reliable method for measuring the effects of drugs and other specific medical interventions, can be used to evaluate broader issues related to public health laws and policies.

Picturing Public Health Law Research: Using Causal Diagrams to Model and Test Theory

Given the multidisciplinary perspectives of Public Health Law Research (PHLR) and the wide range of topics included in PHLR, the use of commonly-understood pictures to illustrate the ways in which law and health interact can be invaluable (Burris et al., 2010). Ranging from laws that prohibit individual behaviors, to laws that provide authority to act, to laws that regulate organizational practices, PHLR seeks to understand the mechanisms by which laws can improve health; visualizing these mechanisms in diagrams is an important tool for achieving such an understanding. The purpose of this monograph is to review some basic conventions used to create visual models, evaluate relevant examples of models in published PHLR studies, and offer recommendations for constructing clear and informative models.