The role of document analysis in health policy analysis studies in low and middle-income countries: Lessons for HPA researchers from a qualitative systematic review

Well-executed document analysis has potential to strengthen HPA studies. Health Policy researcher skill in applying this methodology needs strengthening and could be improved by: purposive alignment of the method to research questions; rigorously applying and reporting on search strategy with rigour; source, organize and store documents systematically; apply robust data coding and analysis; and clearly linking document contribution to study findings and conclusions.