In the process of assessing public policies, it is necessary to use a methodology that adequately guides data acquisition. This paper aims to guide researchers in the type of methodology that should be used in a research study on public policies. In order to explore the different methodological perspectives to study public policies, this paper focuses both on a qualitative research approach and on document tracking and analysis. The findings show that methodologies for conducting studies on public policies, which guide the research process, fall intothree categories: qualitative, quantitative and integrative methodologies. Public policies can be assessed using two approaches, and studies can be conducted either during or after policy implementation. However, these two methodologies do not exhaust the explanation and objective evaluation of these policies; therefore, it is paramount to use a mixed approach.