Research

Conducting research is one of the most important parts of a political campaign and it may take a good amount of effort and time depending on the issue(s) at hand and how many people are contributing. You should have a Research list (or similar) to keep track of, discuss and store findings from your research. Below are some simple steps to conducting research for a specific campaign or issue, and following are some tips on how to conduct thorough research.

Simple steps for research when starting a political campaign

1.      You may need multiple people to conduct research depending on the extent that is necessary.

2.      Document your research, your findings, references etc. in a ‘master document’ (Google Drive is handy for this) and use that to form more coherent, digestible documents, statements, letters, social media posts etc. Always keep track of where you find information. Keep reference lists and make sure statements, posts, and other forms of content are well referenced.

3.      Find out what the media has said about this issue in the past and which journalists and companies covered the issue

4.      Get as much official data as possible from government websites and well-known organisations.

5.      Track changes to relevant laws and policies, which politicians made changes and which ones opposed the changes etc. and use state, federal and international law to suit your needs.

6.      Find out which politicians you need to lobby. Look on government websites at lists of members of Parliament to see which Minister portfolios are relevant enough to lobby and to get their contact information.

7.      What other people and groups are working on this issue or have worked on it in the past? What did they do and was it successful? What can you/your group learn from that?

8.      Is anyone else currently working on the same issue? Can you work together (stakeholders)?

Research tips

When searching online for information, here are some tips to refine your searches and find the information you need:

1.      Using AND, OR & NOT (all caps) in combination with keywords refines searches. (i.e.: prisons AND women AND policies OR laws NOT men)

2.      Use “ “ (quotation marks) for strings of words that you want found together in search results (i.e.: “female prisoners in Western Australia”)

3.      Site:URL (no www., no http/, no spaces) does a search on a specified website (i.e.: www.correctiveservices.wa.gov.au becomes site:correctiveservices.wa.gov.au AND prisoners 2021 in search bar)

4.      If you are getting a pattern of results that you do not want, you can add -word at the end of your search text. For example, if my search for prisoners in 2021 in Western Australia was giving results for male prisoners, I would add -male at the end of my search to remove those specific results. There is no space between the – and the word.

5.      Hitting ‘control + F’ on your keyboard should make a search bar pop up on any page you are on (website, social media page, document etc.) so that you can do a keyword search.

More information here - Boolean search tips