Attributing outcomes to social policy interventions – ‘gold standard’ or ‘fool’s gold’ in public policy and management?

In recent years there has been increased interest in outcome-based social policy, an interest which has been given particular impetus through the ‘results’-based movement in evaluation and performance management since the 1980s, which itself has slowly changed its emphasis from cost reduction and measuring outputs to measuring outcomes. While widely welcomed by policy makers, practitioners and academics, the reality of this change has often rather less than the rhetoric. 

This article outlines the growing interest in outcome-based social policy and the growing realisation of the importance of the attribution problem – working out WHAT has influenced the outcome changes which have occurrred. It outlines how a ‘cause-and-effect’ policy modelling approach can partially tackle the attribution problem, under certain conditions. Finally, several case studies in current UK social policymaking demonstrate the potential importance of the reasoning embedded within cause-and-effect models, while also highlighting the dangers of adopting this approach without understanding its conceptual basis or the situations where it is inappropriate.

Cite as: Tony Bovaird (2012), “Attributing outcomes to social policy interventions – ‘gold standard’ or ‘fool’s gold’ in public policy and management?” Social Policy and Administration, 48 (1): 1–23.