State legislation savvy: a primer and tools for online legislative research in the United States

We describe sources and methods for state legislative research and provide access to the State Legislative Search Guide tool. State legislation creates and regulates chronic disease prevention interventions both directly through programs targeted to reduce the chronic disease burden and legislation affecting environments such as parks and trails that support health behaviors. Researching state legislation helps advocates, policy makers, researchers, and practitioners make informed recommendations to improve chronic disease prevention policies. Several online sources exist for state legislative information, including subscription databases that cover all 50 US states, single-state subscription databases, and public domain state legislative databases administered by each state. The State Legislative Search Guide, in full-length and condensed versions, uses free public domain databases to facilitate comparison of state legislation for all US states. Links to both versions are provided in the article. Legislative research tips on creating search phrases, searching bill content, bill tracking, and selecting databases and also a table of major subscription databases are provided.