Policy content analysis: Qualitative method for analyzing sub-national insect pollinator legislation

This project examines sub-national legislative policy to identify trends and describe policy innovations for addressing insect pollinator declines. Content analysis is used to describe these policies quantitatively (number of policies and frequency per year) and qualitatively (topic, comparison of policy instruments used). The policies selected constitute a census—not a sample—of policies passed then approved by all US state legislatures and signed by state Governors into law from 2000 to 2017. We used QSR International’s NVivo 10 text-based analytic software to organize and document our close-reading (line-by-line coding) of 109 laws to address insect pollinator population declines. Our analysis blended both conventional (inductive) and directed (deductive) content analysis approaches to reveal the spectrum of new legislative innovations and to describe lawmakers’ evolving view of pollinating insects. Applying proven methods from the health sciences and communication studies can aid large-scale analysis of legal texts. • Qualitative content analysis of all US state-level laws passed from 2000 to 2017 addressing insect pollinators (N = 109). • The close-reading analysis mixed both conventional (inductive) and directed (deductive) content analysis approaches to reveal the spectrum of new legislative innovations and to describe evolving views of pollinating insects. • Compared inductively gathered findings from US policies to global experts’ policy recommendations to evaluate status of conservation policy.