9th Biennial ACSPRI Social Science Methodology Conference

Community service organisations generate a wealth of publicly available documents that offer researchers invaluable insights often absent from academic literature. These documents provide crucial data on service utilisation patterns, organisational challenges and opportunities, and a rich understanding of how organisations organise and conceptualise their work. Despite their potential, these resources are frequently overlooked in traditional evidence synthesis methods such as systematic reviews. The Law and Justice Foundation of NSW's report, 'Natural Disaster Related Legal Need in Australia: State of the Evidence,' demonstrates the power of incorporating such documents into evidence synthesis. As part of a larger evidence gathering process, this report included systematic retrieval and analysis of annual reports from all Australian community legal centres, legal aid commissions, and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander legal centres since the 2019-2020 financial year. Relevant parliamentary inquiries and Royal Commissions were also identified, and submissions made by legal assistance providers and other related community service organisations were also considered. By comprehensively reviewing materials from legal assistance providers—including submissions to Royal Commissions and parliamentary inquiries, annual reports, and major organisational publications—the report generated critical insights about the scale and scope of legal needs following natural disasters in Australia. Most data included in the report had not been incorporated in any previous report on this topic. This presentation explores the advantages and challenges of integrating organisational documents into secondary data analysis and evidence synthesis. The retrieval of these documents provided important service utilisation data for some legal assistance providers that had not been included in other reports and identified barriers and challenges to service provision that are essential for understanding how to best meet natural disaster related legal need. We argue that this approach can significantly enhance our understanding of complex social issues and service delivery landscapes, while acknowledging the methodological considerations researchers must navigate when working with these non-traditional data sources.