What Research Topics and Reports Does NASAA Publish?

NASAA (the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies) publishes research and practical resources organized around a set of recurring topic areas, including arts and health, creative aging, the creative economy, evaluation and performance measurement, federal reporting, funding, grant making, strategic planning, and structure. If you are trying to decide which NASAA materials are useful to you, the fastest approach is to start from the topic that matches your role — policymaker, state arts agency staffer, researcher, or advocate — and then look for the specific report or toolkit within that category.

Main research categories

NASAA groups its research resources under these headings:

• Access for All — broadening participation in the arts
• Arts and Health — statewide strategies connecting arts and health
• Ask NASAA — a query service for research questions
• Best Practices — documented approaches from state arts agencies
• Creative Aging — arts programming for older adults
• Creative Economy — the arts as an economic sector
• Evaluation and Performance Measurement — how agencies measure results
• Federal Reporting — reporting requirements and guidance
• Funding — how arts funding works
• Grant Making — grant program design and administration
• Strategic Planning — planning processes for agencies
• Structure — how state arts agencies are organized

These categories sit alongside NASAA's advocacy resources, so research and advocacy are presented as connected rather than separate: the research informs the case that state arts agencies make to legislators and the public.

Representative reports and tools

Several named publications appear on NASAA's site and are worth knowing by title:

The pattern here is useful: for major topics, NASAA often publishes both a full report and a shorter highlights or guide version. If you need a quick orientation, the highlights or guide is the efficient entry point; if you need detail or citations, go to the full report.

How research connects to advocacy and practice

NASAA's structure suggests a deliberate flow from evidence to action:

1. Research establishes what is happening — revenues, appropriations, participation, economic contribution.
2. Best practices and toolkits translate that into replicable approaches.
3. Advocacy resources, including federal updates, use the research to support positions on arts funding.

So if your goal is to make a case for arts funding, the revenues and appropriations reports are the factual backbone, while the advocacy section supplies the framing. If your goal is to run a program, the toolkits and best practices are the more directly usable materials.

Finding the right resource by topic

NASAA's site organizes these materials under a Research menu with the categories listed above, plus an "ALL Research Resources" view. To use it efficiently:

• Identify your topic from the category list (for example, creative aging or the creative economy).
• Check whether a full report, a highlights document, or a toolkit exists for that topic — the naming usually signals the depth.
• Use Ask NASAA if your question does not map cleanly onto an existing publication; it is positioned as a research query service.
• For funding and legislative questions, look at the appropriations preview and revenues report first, since those are the recurring annual publications.

One practical note: NASAA also offers a subscription to its newsletter, NASAA Notes, which is how new reports and updates are announced. If you want to track new research as it is released rather than searching for it later, subscribing is the mechanism the site provides.