As you continue to study the policy topic of interest to you, this assignment requires you to apply the main material of this module in the context of your chosen policy area. Write a 3-5 page paper in which you analyze the design of the policy that is the focus of your chosen topic.
- Describe the goals and objectives of the policy or program you are studying.
- How are the goals connected to the social problems analysis?
- Describe the historical context of the creation of the policy/program you are analyzing. Does your policy represent the continuation of or a departure from previous attempts to solve the social problem in question?
- What larger historical trends were going on at the time of the policy’s creation that influenced its formulation?
- Have the policy/program goals changed over time? If so, how?
- As you learn more about the history, revisit/integrate an analysis of the social problem as defined by the creators/advocates of the policy (as you would have discussed in the previous module’s assignment). How did the ideological assumptions that underlie the creation of the policy grow out of (or contradict) larger historical trends? Think about some of the major ideological issues we have discussed in class, such as the role of government, the root causes of poverty, and the notion of “deservingness”.
- Consider the impact of inequalities such as race, class and gender on the historical development of the policy and its goals. How do assumptions about race, class, gender, disability, or other inequalities affect the ideological assumptions underlying the policy and its goals?
To maximize your score on this assignment, consider the following. Good papers will:
- Address all four areas of social problems analysis presented in the previous module and the text
- Use analytic tools effectively to examine a particular social problems viewpoint
- Integrate an analysis of inequalities into the paper
- Contain very few spelling and grammatical errors
- Have a clear overall organization and argument
- Include paragraphs that have a clear thesis statement and use examples from research to illustrate the main point