New PHLR-Commissioned Paper Addresses Challenges of Evidence-Based Public Health Law

In "Measuring Law for Evaluation Research," published in the June 2010 edition of Evaluation Review, Charles Tremper, Sue Thomas and Alexander C. Wagenaar provide researchers with a practical how-to guide in applying the scientific method to measure the law for quantitative research.

According to the abstract for  “Measuring Law for Evaluation Research:"

“Evaluations that combine social science and law have tremendous potential to illuminate the effects of governmental policies and yield insights into how effectively policy makers’ efforts achieve their aims. This potential is infrequently achieved, however, because such interdisciplinary research contains often overlooked substantive and methodological challenges. This article offers detailed guidance for conducting successful multidisciplinary evaluations that use legal data. It addresses major issues that commonly arise and offers practical solutions based both on the authors’ extensive experience and recommended best practices developed in concert with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Public Health Law Research Program”

Tremper, of the Perutilis Research & Consulting firm in Santa Cruz, Calif.; Thomas, from the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation in Santa Cruz; and Wagenaar, from the University of Florida, College of Medicine, Gainesville, Fla., worked together with funding from Public Health Law Research, a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation® program at Temple University.

The paper is based on an extended PHLR-sponsored methodology monograph, "Measuring Law for Public Health Research."