Identifying Means

Having carefully identified goals, policy analysts need then to address means. They should then have recourse to the interdisciplinary research process in order to identify appropriate policies [see Interdisciplinary Research]:

· Just as with types of ethical analysis, policy analysts have been guilty here of relying on only a subset of relevant theories and methods. Since complex social problems involve multiple types of agency, decision-making, and so on, the typology of theory types [Classifying Theories] suggests that any one theory will give incomplete guidance. That is, the typology highlights the types of questions each theory (best) engages, and thus also their weaknesses with respect to other questions. Familiarity with the typology would guide analysts to recognize the limitations of a particular theory, and to identify other theories with compensating strengths.

· If multiple theories are appropriate then multiple methods are required in order to fairly evaluate the relative importance of these. Here too policy analysis at present tends to rely on one or two methods. But we have seen that there are a dozen methods with compensating strengths and weaknesses [See Classifying Methods]