The Lawrence Busch papers consist of completed surveys given to agricultural scientists as well as the master codebook for the surveys. The surveys include questions about research, relationships to organizations, opinions on criteria for publishing, groups that benefit from research, and opinions on goals of United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and other organizations. The surveys were used to write the book "Science, Agriculture, and the Politics of Research" with William Lacy. The Current Research Information Service database of the USDA was used to generate a random sample of USDA research grants and included agricultural scientists at Land Grant universities and USDA laboratories.