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4500 Course Syllabus
Home Social Welfare Policy Analysis Working definition of Social Welfare Policy •Interrelated but not necessarily logically consistent principles, guidelines, procedures designed to deal with the problem of dependency in our society • Policies may be laws, public or private regulations, administrative rules, formal procedures or normally sanctioned patterns of behavior
Social Welfare Policy Analysis •The disciplined application of intellect to the study of collective responses to public (social welfare) problems • Broad and general (like the term research) Types of Descriptive Analysis Content Analysis •Empirical description of a policy in terms of its intentions, problem definitions, goals and means employed to achieve its goals • Does not usually include evaluation of policy's effectiveness • Sar Levitan - Programs in Aid of the Poor uses primarily a content analysis approach Choice Analysis •Systematic process of looking at the options available to planners (policy makers) for dealing with a social welfare problem • Looking at the choices, values, assumptions made when plans, laws, proposals evolve into programs, (Gilbert and Specht) Four dimensions of Choice Analysis •Bases of allocations - decisions about who will benefit from a policy –universal or selective or categorical •Types of Benefits –Benefits in kind are goods and services – Cash subsidizes – Vouchers targeted for specific purchases – Voluntary or mandatory
Four dimensions of Choice Analysis •Delivery Structure - how services or goods actually get to the client –centralization or decentralization – public or private •Financing benefits –taxation, fees, voluntary contributions, combination – Federal, state or local Comparative Analysis •Systematically comparing policies across two or more settings –countries – federal, state – states •Kamerman & Kahn - cross national study of child care benefits and policies Historical Analysis •To understand a policy have examine its evolution • Evaluate the cultural context of the times Process Analysis Process Analysis •Less concerned about the content, more concerned about the how the policy came into being –Example is the policy aggressively discouraging interracial adoptions Evaluating Social Welfare Policy Logical Evaluation •Goes beyond content analysis and looks at the policies internal rigor and consistency –Internal consistency in achieving multiple goals – Consistency between the goals and the means of achieving them – Difference between intended and unintended consequences Quantitative Evaluation •Measurements of effectiveness and efficiency –Head start, p.55 •Policy Experiment –uses research techniques •research questions, hypothesis, design, test, analyze –Income maintenance experiments, p. 55 Ethical evaluation •Ethical conflicts present • Values and assumptions underlying policy Policy analysis as art and science Limits of analysis •Social policies address social problems and as such are very complex • Complex and competing values and interests, some of which are hidden • Complete policy analysis is expensive • It is always political
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