Doctrinal Research
Definition
Legal research that analyses primary sources, statutes, judgments and authoritative commentary, to state what the law currently is and how courts have interpreted it, without collecting behavioural data.
Related terms
- Descriptive Research
- A design that profiles the scale, pattern or distribution of a phenomenon, for example who is affected, where and how often, without...
- Evaluation Research
- A form of applied research that measures whether an existing programme, policy or intervention achieved its intended outcome, often using a before-and-after...
- Experimental Research
- A design in which the researcher deliberately manipulates one variable, ideally with random assignment to treatment and control conditions, to isolate its...
- Explanatory Research
- Also called analytical research, a design that tests a proposed relationship between variables to establish why a phenomenon occurs, usually through statistical...
- Exploratory Research
- A design used when a topic is poorly understood, aimed at generating hypotheses and mapping the scope of a problem rather than...