Research Methods for Social Policy Analysis

SW832, Section 001

This course covers research methods for assessing the nature and extent of needs for social intervention, evaluating the success or failure of existing social welfare policies, and determining the anticipated consequences of alternative policies and interventions. Also considered will be values and assumptions underlying policies and research, similarities and differences between methods for developing social policy knowledge and those for basic knowledge development, strategies to promote utilization and dissemination of research results, and methods of studying community, regional, national, and comparative international policies.

The focus of the course this term will be on techniques to draw policy relevant inferences from data sets such as surveys. The course will review the fundamentals of regression analysis, bivariate and multivariate. Then we will focus on statistical inference using data sets with multicolinearity of variables in situations where theory provides only minimal guidance of how to deal with that. The emphasis will be on clarity of basic concepts, intuitive understanding of techniques, and explaining regression results, both coefficients and statistical tests, to non-technical policy decision makers. The course will also deal with power and limits of benefit cost analysis and related economic methods of policy analysis.