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Explore science by method, field & evidence.

One catalogue of research methods — learn how each one works, when to use it, and what it can’t do.

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8,178 methods11 fields7 method families40 languages
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FieldHealth & Medicine716Psychology570Business & Finance410Engineering330Life Sciences263Education261Research Practice
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Entries are compiled from published sources for reference. Verifying the accuracy and suitability of any information for your own use remains your responsibility.

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Law30
MethodStatistics1,836AI & ML1,661Decision Sciences932Research Methods1,354Measurement1,745Causal & Evidence532Research Practice118
11 methods in Law · Research MethodsClear
Methods at the intersection of your two filters.
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field methods

Case Law Analysis

Case law analysis is a systematic method for examining judicial decisions to identify binding legal rules, evolving doctrines, and interpretive trends. Rooted in the common law tradition of stare decisis, it requires the researcher to locate the ratio decidendi — the binding reasoning — of each decision, distinguish it

2 sources
field methods

Comparative Doctrinal Legal Research

Comparative doctrinal legal research systematically identifies, expounds, and compares the legal rules, principles, and doctrines governing the same problem across two or more jurisdictions. It combines the internal rigour of doctrinal analysis — mapping the authoritative sources of a single legal system — with the ext

2 sources1960
field methods

Comparative Legal Analysis

Comparative legal analysis is a structured research method that examines how two or more legal systems — whether national, regional, or supranational — address a common legal problem. By placing rules, doctrines, and judicial decisions side by side, researchers identify convergences, divergences, and the underlying soc

2 sources1900
international relations

Content Analysis of Treaties

Content analysis of treaties is the systematic, rule-governed coding of the text and design features of international agreements — their obligations, precision, delegation, enforcement, flexibility, and substantive provisions — to study how treaties are written and what explains variation in their design. It applies th

2 sources2000
field methods

Critical Case Law Analysis

Critical case law analysis applies the theoretical tools of Critical Legal Studies (CLS) to the examination of judicial decisions. Rather than accepting legal reasoning at face value, this approach interrogates how courts construct legal arguments, whose interests those arguments serve, and how ideological commitments

2 sources1970
field methods

Critical Doctrinal Legal Research

Critical doctrinal legal research combines traditional black-letter legal analysis — systematically mapping the rules, principles, and doctrines found in statutes and case law — with the evaluative lens of critical legal theory. Rather than treating legal doctrine as a neutral or self-contained system, it interrogates

2 sources1970
field methods

Evaluation-focused legal content analysis

Evaluation-focused legal content analysis is a systematic method for examining legal texts — statutes, regulations, court decisions, contracts, or policy documents — with an explicit evaluative purpose: to assess whether and how well legal instruments achieve specified goals, standards, or values. It combines the struc

2 sources1990
field methods

Legal Content Analysis

Legal content analysis applies the systematic procedures of content analysis to legal texts — statutes, regulations, judicial opinions, treaties, and legal commentaries — in order to identify patterns, themes, and trends across a corpus of legal material. It bridges qualitative legal scholarship and quantitative social

2 sources1940
field methods

Longitudinal comparative legal analysis

Longitudinal comparative legal analysis examines how legal rules, doctrines, or institutions develop and diverge across two or more legal systems over an extended period. By combining the spatial dimension of comparative law with the temporal dimension of longitudinal research, it captures not just differences between

2 sources1960
futures foresight studies

PESTEL Macro-Environmental Scanning

PESTEL macro-environmental scanning is a structured audit of the forces in an organization's wider operating environment, organized into six factor classes: Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Environmental, and Legal. Unlike open-ended horizon scanning, PESTEL is typically run as a deliberate audit that enumer

2 sources2003
religious studies

Ritual Density Coding

Ritual density coding is a method for analyzing religious rituals by coding them on two key dimensions - how often they are performed (frequency) and how emotionally intense or dysphoric they are (arousal) - in order to locate a tradition along Harvey Whitehouse's imagistic-doctrinal continuum. In his 2004 book Modes o

1 source2004