Analyzing Congressional Research Service Reports on Education - How Is Information Used at Congress’s Think Tank

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by Adam

Analyzing how the Congressional Research Service (CRS) education-related reports inform federal policymaking, this study uses content analysis to examine CRS reports from the 115th Congress and identifies the sources shaping congressional decisions. The work frames CRS as a nonpartisan intermediary and explores both direct and indirect references to research inputs. Findings illuminate research utilization within the education policy process and extend scholarship on intermediary organizations and knowledge brokering.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages17

Reading Time43 min

AccessFree to download

Introduction

CRS as an information provider and intermediary

Access barriers and the 2018 policy change

Study motivation and research questions

AERA Open January-December 2022, Vol. 8, No. 1, pp. 1–17 DOI: 10. 1177/23328584221117166 Article reuse guidelines: [sagepub.com/journals-permissions](sagepub.com/journals-permissions)[ ](sagepub.com/journals-permissions)© The Author(s) 2022. [https://journals.sagepub.com/home/ero](https://journals.sagepub.com/home/ero) Analyzing Congressional Research Service Reports on Education: How Is Information Used at Congress’s Think Tank? Paul G. Rubin University of Utah Jennifer B. Ayscue Elizabeth M. Uzzell North Carolina State University The Congressional Research Service (CRS) is the nonpartisan research and analytical arm of the U.S. Congress and is physically and structurally located within the Library of Congress. Despite the role of CRS as a critical information provider and technical assistant to actors crafting and implementing federal policy, CRS reports, which serve as a key mechanism of information dissemination and influence by the organization, only became widely available to the public following the adoption of the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2018. This study uses content analysis to examine CRS’s education-related reports from the 115th Congress to explore what sources are directly and indirectly informing federal policymaking based on references in CRS reports. Findings offer insights into research utilization in the federal education policy process and contribute to the growing literature on intermediary organizations and knowledge brokering. Keywords: policy, research utilization, education policy, qualitative research, content analysis, federal policymaking, intermediary organization, Congressional Research Service, Congress Introduction The Congressional Research Service (CRS) serves as the nonpartisan research and analytical arm of the U.S. Congress, acting primarily as an information provider to members of Congress and congressional committees. Referred to as“Congress’s think tank”(Williamson, 2007) and housed in the Library of Congress, CRS “operates solely at the behest of and under the direction of Congress”(Library of Congress, n.d.) and, per its mission, provides “the highest quality of research, analysis, information, and confidential consultation” (Mazanec, 2019) . This role of CRS has become increasingly distinctive as decades of disinvestment in the federal government’s capacity to conduct research and analysis has presented increased opportunity for lobbyists and partisan organizations to influence the federal policymaking process (Baumgartner & Jones, 2018; Drutman & Teles, 2015) . Furthermore, recent work has noted that CRS maintains a precarious relationship with the U.S. Congress due to fear of “political retribution”(Kosar, 2020, p. 139), which has resulted in ongoing internal debate around whether the organization should maintain “objectivity” versus “neutrality” in its reports and materials (Aftergood, 2006; Kosar, 2020) . Despite these challenges, CRS has been recognized in research examining U.S. federal policymaking as a key actor supporting members of Congress throughout the stages of the policy process (Dreyfus, 1976; Fagan & McGee, 2020; Gude, 1985; Kosar, 2020; Rothstein, 1990; Weiss, 1989; Wolanin, 1976) . Nevertheless, few empirical studies have directly examined the organization. This gap in the literature can be attributed to long-standing restrictions and burdensome barriersin accessing documents and contacting CRS staff for individuals unaffiliated with Congress (Mulhollan, 2007) . In turn, private citizens and researchers were left at the behest of complicated and costly processes to gain access to information produced by CRS (Kosar, 2015, 2020; Williamson, 2007) . However, this limitation was removed with the passing of the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2018, which“directed the Library [of Congress] to make CRS reports publicly available online”(Hayden, 2018) .1 Creative Commons Non Commercial CC BY-NC: This article is distributed under

FAQs

What is the main purpose of the study on CRS education reports?

To examine how information in CRS education-related reports is used to inform federal policymaking based on the references contained in those reports.

Which dataset and time period does the study analyze?

The study analyzes CRS education-related reports from the 115th Congress.

Why was wider public availability of CRS reports after 2018 important for this research?

It reduced long-standing barriers to accessing CRS documents and allowed researchers and private citizens to use CRS outputs more directly, enabling this kind of content analysis.

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by Adam