| Abstract
| - It has been argued that even in areas where women are the most directly affected by policy decisions, their views and experiences are often not elicited and that even when women are included in policy research, the outcomes reflect the (male) researcher's individual biases and preconceived assumptions. The heavy reliance on quantitative methods and structured questionnaires often obscures multiple perspectives and the diversity among research subjects. Using an example of a women's town hall research project, this article discusses how the diverse “voices” of women can be incorporated in an analysis of policy issues. It illustrates how qualitative and quantitative research methods can be integrated to identify and understand policy issues. Using focus groups of women across the state of Arizona and traditional quantitative state and national data, this research approach provided women a voice and allowed women's perspectives on the issue of families in crisis to be heard. Although time and resource constraints are often seen as barriers to using qualitative methods, the example presented in this article suggests one strategy for implementing such an approach.
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