Armchair Analysis

Armchair analysis is the building block on which public policy research is built.  It is the most common form of policy research and can easily be used in later field research methods.  When beginning my analysis, I was skeptical of how effective a policy research method could be if the researcher never had to leave their home, or "armchair" to do it.  I was uncomfortable with the rigid chart structure of the results and the many forms of commentary required for each source in the analysis.  My feelings changed, however, once I realized how important the analysis would be to my thesis which I will be researching this summer.   

For my thesis, I am studying the economic effect of the 1994 Winter Olympics in Lillehammer Norway.  I am predominantly interested in whether hosting the games stimulated economic growth long-term in the inland counties of Norway, an original goal of the Lillehammer Olympic Organizing Committee (LOOC).  For my armchair analysis, I identified three main concepts: (1) the 1994 Lillehammer Winter Olympics, (2) economic effects of hosting Olympic Games, and (3) inland vs outland Norway.  By searching key terms under these three concepts in GoogleScholar and ArticlesPlus, I was able to discover many interesting and useful academic sources pertaining to my topic.  These sources provided a backbone to my understand of the '94 Games, the economic effects of hosting the Winter Olympics and the regional landscape in Norway.

After completing the armchair analysis, I had a better understanding of the policy landscape in my thesis topic.  The analysis also helped me identify the sources and authors which would later be extremely useful to my research in the future.  It provided me with a solid background that made some of the other complicated analyses clearer and easier to perform.  Even after my final project is turned in, I plan on continuing to organize my thesis research in my armchair analysis.