Qualitative data and analysis can enrich our understanding of key questions in behavioural public policy. In this perspective, I make the case for incorporating qualitative approaches better and more often into our research. I offer practical ideas on how to do this, and a call for action from researchers, reviewers, editors, policy makers and our Higher Education and funding institutions.

We investigate the impact of corruption on female leadership in Brazil using cross-sectional municipal-level data. Our findings suggest that corruption significantly reduces the proportion of working women in leadership roles. Additionally, corruption decreases female representation in leadership relative to men, though this effect is less robust. When examining sectors most vulnerable to corruption, the results remain largely consistent, but we also note that women tend to avoid these sectors entirely. Our findings suggest that corruption acts as a significant barrier to female leadership.

Sludge is one of the most important yet underappreciated problems in modern society. Examples of sludge include unnecessarily complex paperwork requirements, hard-to-navigate documents and websites, long waiting time, and unfriendly or confusing staff interactions. However, little is known about whether some people are more vulnerable to and less accepting of some types of sludge than others. Drawing on data from a nationally representative survey with 1,591 participants from Ireland, we show that people report being particularly vulnerable to outdated websites with broken links, unfriendly staff interactions, complex documents laden with jargon, and hard-to-navigate websites. These are also the types of sludge that are least acceptable. Less vulnerability is reported to long waiting times and requirements about having to provide private information. We find only minor differences in sludge perceptions depending on whether the sludge emerges in the public or the private sector. Moreover, people with poor mental health report being more vulnerable to and less accepting of sludge. Self-reported administrative literacy is related to less reported vulnerability, and the tendency to procrastinate and a lack of time and mental energy predict more reported vulnerability to sludge. Administrative literacy and a lack of mental energy also predict acceptability of sludge.

Sums of the ratings that judges assign to wines are a near universal method of determining the winners and losers of wine competitions. Sums are easy to calculate and easy to communicate, but seven flaws make sums of ratings a perilous guide to relative quality or preference. Stars & Bars combinatorics show that the same sum can be the result of billions of compositions of ratings and that those compositions, for the same sum, can contain dispersion that ranges from universal consensus to apparent randomness to polar disagreement. Order preference models can address both order and dispersion, and an example using a Plackett–Luce model yields maximum likelihood estimates of top-choice probabilities that are a defensible guide to relative quality or preference.