Welfare Rights: An Experimental Approach

Much of the writing on evaluation research in social policy is devoted to the problems of carrying it out. The American textbooks on the subject anguish over difficulties of formulating programme goals, of finding indicators that measure outcome, of controlling for intervening variables and maintaining the programme during the crises of the experimental period and finally, the problems of drawing conclusions from the results (e.g. Weiss, 1972 ; Suchman, 1967 ; Rossi and Williams, 1972 )! Yet despite the difficulties inherent in the method (and the generally pessimistic nature of conclusions) more and more social agencies in the USA are being subjected to the scrutiny of the social scientist. In Britain evaluative studies of social policy have been slower to develop. Most of those that have been carried out are of an ex post facto type and there have been very few attempts at social policy experiments or field trials. The two most notable recent experimental studies in social policy in Britain have been Goldberg’s evaluative study of social work with the elderly (1970) and the Educational Priority Area (EPA) actionresearch study (Halsey, 1972).