Chapter 9 essay

CHAPTER 9: POLICY OUTCOMES

■ Policy outcomes: Reactions people have once social problems workers have implemented a

policy; some possible policy outcomes

■ Complete happiness about policy and how it is working (rare)

■ Complete rejection of policy and how it is working (also rare)

■ Realization that troubling condition not ending after all

■ Often leads to refinement of policy

■ Understanding that there are often multiple causes, which might not all be being

managed by the policy

■ New claims can arise based on evaluation of the policy in question; policy criticisms fall under

several broad categories

■ Policy was insufficient to solve the problem

■ More needs to be done

■ Might be that original policy was aimed too narrowly in order to gain support

■ Policy was excessive

■ Original policy was overly broad

■ Needs to be limited in some or many ways in order to become more successful

■ Policy was misguided

■ Might be that the policy did not solve the condition for which it was created

■ Condition is real but policy not successful at eradication

■ Policy may make things worse

■ Implementation (social problems work) is not meeting the initial purpose of the

claimsmakers

■ Who tend to be policy critics?

■ Social problems workers, because they know the policy most intimately and therefore are

often the most ambivalent about its implementation

■ Subjects of the policy, because they feel on a daily basis the frustrations and perceived

inadequacies of the policy and hope to make it better

■ Original claimsmakers, because they know what the original vision was and can see how

policy does not fulfill their vision

■ Counterclaimsmakers, be they primary or secondary claimsmakers, who disliked the

original claims and policy and wish to overturn them

■ Evaluating Policy

■ Question of who would be best evaluators, outsiders or insiders to the social problems

process

■ Methods of evaluation used in policy studies

■ Experiments are rarely used to measure effectiveness

■ Nonexperimental studies are more commonly used

■ Evaluate across two or more times, when policy existed and when did not

■ Evaluate across place, looking at whether location effects policy (e.g., normally one

place would have the policy and another would not; usually try to hold population as

constant as possible to facilitate evaluation)

■ Use whatever kinds of data are available, without necessarily being sure they are

generated in acceptable social-scientific ways

■ Methodological concerns

■ Quality of evidence available for analysis

■ Constraints on what can be gathered (i.e., confidentiality, etc.)

■ Accuracy of records

■ Consistency of record collection procedures

■ Bias in evaluators, especially if they are internal to the social problems process

■ Choice of methods for evaluation: are they the best for the particular situation?

■ Special groups created just for policy evaluation sometimes created in order to lend

credibility to the process

■ National commissions

■ State or local commissions

■ Appellate courts as policy evaluators

■ Sometimes asked to rule on constitutionality

■ Asked to limit policy in a number of ways

■ Implementation timetables

■ Range of persons the policy effects

■ Policy debates center on

■ Ideology breaks down into often predictable sides

■ Leftist ideologies stress equality and concerns about discrimination and need for

encouraging equality

■ Rightist ideologies stress liberty and order

■ Interests

■ Case study: Modifying Student Loans