ArticleHealth policy and planning2021
Document analysis in health policy research: the READ approach.
Article in Health policy and planning, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 229 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
229 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Implementation of safety management systems (SMS) in healthcare: a systematic review and international comparison.BMJ open · 2026Pooled it
- Policies and guidelines supporting the sustainability of human milk donation to milk banks in Switzerland: a document analysis.International journal for equity in health · 2025Pooled it
- Four-quadrant analysis of universal health coverage progress in the Western Pacific region: facilitators, barriers, and trajectories to 2030.Global health action · 2026Article
- Public primary healthcare service network planning in Finland: a document analysis of principles, justifications, and future directions.Scandinavian journal of primary health care · 2026Article
- Mapping the existence and content of heading coaching documents across FIFA members associations.JSAMS plus · 2026Article
- Supporting the economic and health resilience of last mile adolescent girls and young Women in mining communities: A global and national level comparative policy analysis.Dialogues in health · 2026Article
- Communicating with children about a parent's cancer: A document analysis of national cancer organization websites across 13 countries.Asia-Pacific journal of oncology nursing · 2026Article
- Fostering Equity in and Through Sport: A Content Analysis of Sports Policies for Migrants in Australia.Health promotion journal of Australia : official journal of Australian Association of Health Promotion Professionals · 2026Article
- Regulating the drafting fiction: A qualitative content analysis of official guidance and regulator documents on AI scribe adoption and use in healthcare.PLOS digital health · 2026Article
- Stakeholder Perspectives on Power Transfer During Implementation of Psychiatric Self-Admission in Scandinavia: A Qualitative Study.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Lithuania's National Digital Health System Architecture, Evolution, and Lessons From a Centralized Approach Using Longitudinal Document Analysis: Descriptive National Case Study.JMIR formative research · 2026Article
- Health information manager competency standards and their application to final-year, work-integrated learning (professional practice) project descriptions and learning outcomes.Health information management : journal of the Health Information Management Association of Australia · 2026Article
- Commercial interests in health policy dialogues: a qualitative content analysis of NEDLAC's engagement with South Africa's Health Promotion Levy.Globalization and health · 2026Article
- The health policy processes section: scope and future.Health policy and planning · 2026Article
- Benchmarking of Saudi pharmacovigilance inspection standards across international regulatory authorities.Naunyn-Schmiedeberg's archives of pharmacology · 2026Article
- National palliative care laws in Europe: do they enable access and effectively promote the development of palliative care within health systems? A comparative multimethod analysis.European journal of public health · 2026Article
- Article
- Ripple effects of a patient & health-system partnered engagement project: a co-developed protocol.Research involvement and engagement · 2026Review
- Primary health care transformation and health equity in ageing societies: lessons from Singapore.BMC health services research · 2026Article
- Political prioritization of alcohol and sugar-sweetened beverage taxation in Uganda: Agenda dynamics amidst a shifting funding landscape.Globalization and health · 2026Article
169 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Document analysis is one of the most commonly used and powerful methods in health policy research. While existing qualitative research manuals offer direction for conducting document analysis, there has been little specific discussion about how to use this method to understand and analyse health policy. Drawing on guidance from other disciplines and our own research experience, we present a systematic approach for document analysis in health policy research called the READ approach: (1) ready your materials, (2) extract data, (3) analyse data and (4) distil your findings. We provide practical advice on each step, with consideration of epistemological and theoretical issues such as the socially constructed nature of documents and their role in modern bureaucracies. We provide examples of document analysis from two case studies from our work in Pakistan and Niger in which documents provided critical insight and advanced empirical and theoretical understanding of a health policy issue. Coding tools for each case study are included as Supplementary Files to inspire and guide future research. These case studies illustrate the value of rigorous document analysis to understand policy content and processes and discourse around policy, in ways that are either not possible using other methods, or greatly enrich other methods such as in-depth interviews and observation. Given the central nature of documents to health policy research and importance of reading them critically, the READ approach provides practical guidance on gaining the most out of documents and ensuring rigour in document analysis.
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What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.