This assignment draws on Chapter 7 (Best 2017) to help you think about how their topic is situated within the social policy environment. Later, you will read Chapter 9 (Best 2017), which you can use to refine your assignment.
By identifying the policies in your list of sources, you will again think more critically about where information sources came from.
By using the expertise you have on your specific issue, you will become better able to see how other parts of the social problems process influence the viability of a condition within policy arenas.
By looking at specific social policies and thinking about how to assess them, you will gain a better understanding of the ways that social policies and evaluations of them are socially constructed.
Look at your list of sources from your annotated bibliography in Assignment 1. Identify those which you believe are policies. Separate the “Policy” using a new subheading on the original Annotated Bibliography page. Sources should still be alphabetical within each subsection. On your bibliography page, you’ll now have your general list that contains all the sources you feel are authored by "Other," another that is just for "Policy," another for the "Activists," and a section for "Experts."
Include at least three social policies that have either been enacted or proposed for dealing with your condition in your annotated bibliography in the new section titled "Policy." Some policies may directly deal with your condition while others may deal with just one element of it. For example, there are laws that regulate child labor in the United States and then there are rules or norms in certain industries that influence the use of young workers. Keep in mind that, as our book discusses, some social issues may be best addressed through policies implemented at the organizational level, rather than government policy or laws (see the example from The Petal Project below).
You may also find other sources that indirectly discuss these policies that you may wish to add to your "Experts," "Activists," and "Other Sources" (like the example from the EPA below).
Develop a plan for analyzing the effectiveness of these policies.
Make a new page of your website titled “Policy.”
Identify at least two policies that are most relevant to your condition. Assume that you have been asked to provide an assessment of the effectiveness or likely effectiveness of the social policies.
Make a list of at least four questions that you would need to have answered about each of the two social policies in order to say whether they were effective (for example, would you need to analyze the risks of a certain element of the policy?). You should have a total of eight questions - four each for each policy.
Then discuss how you would go about answering these questions. Be sure to address issues of objectivity, ethics, and funding as you discuss the methods you would use. If someone has already answered the question in an assessment of the policy, you may wish to include this information (and an appropriate citation). Make sure you link your discussion to the principles outlined in Chapter 9 (once we have read it) about how policy efficacy is measured. It might also help to think about some of the research methods we learned about when we studied the role of experts in the social problems process.
Make a new page of your website titled “Policy” for this assignment.
List (and cite) two policies separately on this page.
For each policy, list out four questions you would ask to decide whether the policy is/was effective and determine the risks of the policy. Under each question, write several sentences explaining how you would go about answering this question.
Strong assignments will:
Clearly explain using plain language; and
Use ideas from the readings and class to develop questions to evaluate policies.
See grading criteria for the final project here.
(updated for this assignment)
Extinction Rebellion. n.d. “Climate And Ecological Emergency (Declaration, Emissions Target And Citizens Assembly) Bill.”
Assembly bill for U.K. proposed by activist organization Extinction Rebellion.
Weyler, Rex. 2019. “The Youth Have Seen Enough.” Greenpeace.
News article authored by journalist in activist organization describing recent school strikes for climate change.
Environmental Protection Agency. 2020. "Environmental Justice and National Environmental Policy Act."
Oreskes, Naomi. 2004. “The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change.” Science.
Academic article on current climate change science.
Warner, Keith Douglass and David DeCosse. n.d. “Lesson Five: Environmental Justice.” A Short Course in Environmental Ethics. Santa Clara, CA: Markkula Center for Applied Ethics.
Web site lesson on environmental justice from an academic institute.
Anon. 2007. "Citizens Guide to NEPA." Nepa.gov
The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) is a U.S. environmental law that established the President's Council on Environmental Quality and encourages the enhancement of the environment.
The Petal Project. n.d. "Sample Environmental Policy."
The Petal Project is a green business certification organization. This document provides a simple environmental policy that businesses and other organizations might implement to show their commitment to environmental responsibility.
Wallace-Wells, David. 2017. “The Uninhabitable Earth, Annotated Edition.” New York Magazine.
Magazine article laying out current understanding of scientific details about the future of climate change.
Instructions for peer review for this assignment are located here: