By the broadest definition, this covers organizations in the private, public and academic sectors dedicated to applying disciplinary skills or perspectives to practical issues. A threshold issue in the survey involved identifying which organizations qualified as think tanks. A total of 111 organizations appeared to meet these criteria, and 89 of these responded to the request for data. Subsequent checks established that all major Australian think tanks were included. Each environment needs to be considered separately for an accurate description of institutional trends.
Some broad numbers reflect the scale of the national effort.
The number of university-based think tanks has grown in the past few years. Seventeen of the 51 have been established since 1989. The issues that were the subject of research reflected recent preoccupations of public policy. This analysis should be weighted by expenditure to reflect the quantity of dedicated research. Nevertheless, the crude numbers are a reasonable indicator of public policy priorities since most centers drew directly or indirectly on public funding.