Methods of Measuring the Impacts of Social Policy in Political, Economic and Social Dimensions

This paper reviews current impact assessment methods and builds on Amartya Sen’s framework of comprehensive and culmination outcomes to identify elements of a comprehensive framework that enables a systems approach to the analysis of social policy. Discussing how mainstream evaluation methods have assessed the outcomes of social security systems, the underlying assumptions of these methods and the associated challenges for the realization of comprehensive outcomes, the paper argues that inclusion of the processes, institutions and actors of social policy interventions that importantly affect programme objectives—along with the actually realized outcomes—should be integrated into a comprehensive approach to better inform social policies.