Using Public Policy for Social Change:

Course Glossary
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● Advocacy: Organized actions that attempt to inform, make recommendations,

argue for or against a cause, etc., on behalf of others.

● Agenda Setting: The process by which problem definitions, issues, and policy
preferences compete for attention from major actors in the policy-making cycle,
including advocacy organizations, lobbyists, the media, and policymakers in all
branches of government.

● Bureaucracy: A complex organization that has multiple subunits and many

layers of administration systems and processes; all governments are
bureaucracies.

● Causal Inference: The process of determining the independent and actual

causal effect of a particular phenomenon on an outcome. This includes the
causal impacts of a program, policy, or other intervention on specific outcomes.

● Coalition: An alliance of distinct parties, persons, or states for joint action or to

bolster recognition or efforts around a social issue.

● Coalition-Building: The process by which individuals and organizations come

together to form an action-oriented group to coordinate efforts to achieve a broad
range of goals beyond the scope of a single organization.

● Conflict Resolution: The intentional and strategic use of processes, tools, and
skills to find creative and respectful ways to manage disagreements and
disputes. Conflict resolution is typically used within a negotiation process to help
work through conflicts and points of disagreement.

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 ● Cost-Benefit Analysis: A type of analysis used to determine the net economic
benefit of a policy or other intervention in which both costs and benefits are
measured in monetary units.

● Cost-Effectiveness Analysis: A type of analysis used to determine how much a

policy or intervention costs per unit of some type of outcome, in which costs are
measured in monetary units but benefits are measured in non-monetary units
related to the objectives of the intervention.

● Counterfactual: The counterfactual is the group or comparison in a research

design that demonstrates the conditions in which there is no intervention; it is the
estimate of what would be happening in the absence of an intervention or
change.

● Delayed Intervention: The offering of an intervention to a control or comparison

group after the research evaluation has been conducted.

● Equality: Each individual, group of people, or community has the same

resources, opportunities, and treatment.

● Equity: Recognizes that individuals, groups, and communities have different

circumstances and allocates/upholds the resources, opportunities, and
experiences given to each that are needed to achieve equal outcomes.

● Ethical Behavior: Behavior or actions that are considered “right” or “good” in the
context of a governing moral code.

● Ethics: A code of moral standards for conduct, behavior, and action regarding
what is “good” or “right” versus what is “bad” or “wrong.”

● Exhort: Strongly encourage or urge a person, organization, or business to do

something based on values.

● Experimental Design: Research designs in which groups are randomly

assigned to some sort of intervention or treatment to estimate the causal effects
of the intervention.

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 ● Experimental Mortality: A threat to the internal validity of a research design in
which people being observed drop out of the study or are "lost to follow-up" over
time. This term refers to losing people who are in a study sample over time for
many reasons, not just actual death.

● Expert Power: Power that comes from expertise and knowledge.

● External Validity: The external validity of a research design has to do with the
degree to which you can generalize the findings from the research population to
other groups or populations, or to situations outside of a research environment. A
research design is externally valid if you can say that the way the research was
conducted (including who was in the research study) does not threaten your
ability to generalize from the findings.

● Formal Policy: A policy for which there are consequences (criminal, civil,
administrative, etc.) for not following. Examples include laws, regulations,
licensure requirements, etc.

● Framework: An organizing set of concepts or ideas that assists in understanding

or analyzing a complex phenomenon.

● Government Contract: Financial agreements between government agencies or

government branches and private companies.

● Grant: A quantity of money or financial assistance provided by a government,

organization, or person for a specific authorized purpose. Government grants are
typically awarded to non-profit organizations, universities, researchers, and state
and local governments.

● Grassroots Advocacy: The process of communicating with the general public

and asking them to contact their local, state, or federal officials regarding a
particular issue; a form of citizen-based activism.

● Grassroots Lobbying: The process of asking the general public to take action to
attempt to influence a specific policy decision.

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● History [In the context of public policy evaluation/research design]: A threat to

the internal validity of a research design in which specific events outside the
control of the study and outside of the individual participants that occur between
observations or measurements.

● Incentive: Something, such as the fear of punishment or the expectation of

reward, that induces action or motivates effort. A common incentive in public
policy is the economic incentive of offering a tax rebate or deduction for a specific
behavior.

● Inequalities: Differences in outcomes that are deemed as unfair or unjust

because they are not equal.

● Inequities: Differences in inputs and outcomes that are deemed as unfair or

unjust because of differential access to resources, opportunities, environments,
and differential treatment.

● Impact Program Evaluation: A type of program evaluation that focuses on the

more proximate mediators or intermediate steps of a program, intervention, or
policy rather than the final outcomes.

● Informal Policy: A type of policy for which there are no consequences for not
following. Examples include guidelines, consensus panel recommendations,
information campaigns, nudges, incentives, etc.

● Institutional Racism: Sometimes used as a synonym for structural and systemic

racism, is also used to refer to policies, rules, and culture within a particular
institution (school, hospital, police department, etc.) that create bias and
differential treatment by race and ethnicity.

● Internal Validity: The internal validity of a research design refers to the strength
of the design to establish a relationship between the intervention or treatment (X)
and a phenomenon of interest (O). A research design is internally valid if you can
observe a causal relationship between the intervention (X) and the
outcome/impact of interest (O) without the threat of a "rival hypothesis" or
alternative explanation.

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 ● Instrumentation: A threat to the internal validity of research design in which
changes in a measurement instrument or changes in observers/scorers may
account for some difference in measurements at two points in time.

● Issue Framing: The common social and political collective process of shaping
the definition and interpretation of a set of conditions as being a “problem” in
some way. How an issue is framed or defined is important in public policy
because it shapes policy discourse and agenda setting.

● Law: A rule of conduct or action prescribed or formally recognized as binding or

enforced by a legislature or other elected governing body.

● Legitimate Power: A type of political power that comes with a formal position of
authority.
● Lobbying: An organized and focused form of advocacy with the specific purpose
of influencing legislation.

● Maturation: A threat to the internal validity of a research design in which

processes within the participant or subject that change between observations or
measurements (e.g., becoming more tired or frail, changes in self-esteem, etc.).

● Moral Persuasion: Appealing to the ethical principles or moral values of an

adversary or the public, rather than through coercion or force, to change their
behavior or attitudes.

● Moral Reasoning: Critical analysis using logic and decision rules to determine
what is right versus wrong, and what ought to be done in a specific situation.

● Negotiation: The strategic process of making a joint decision when the parties
involved have different perspectives, motivations, and interests. Negotiation
tactics are typically used when the parties want a similar end outcome.

● Outcome Program Evaluation: A type of program evaluation that focuses on

the end outcomes of a program, intervention, or policy.

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● Persuasion: An ethical form of influence that leaders use to compel their

followers to act.

● Policy: A course or principle of action adopted or proposed by a government,

party, business, organization, or individual. Public policy is a policy adopted or
proposed by governments at all levels (local, state/provincial, regional, national,
and international).

● Policy Making Cycle: The major steps in the process of creating, implementing,
and evaluating public policy, including 1) problem definition/issue framing; 2)
agenda setting; 3) design or assessment of options or potential interventions; 4)
policy decisions; 5) policy implementation; and 6) policy evaluation.

● Policy Microsimulation Modeling: A type of prospective policy analysis that

involves a computer-generated forecast that attempts to imitate or mimic the
operation of government programs/policies on micro units (individual,
households, organizations) under different sets of assumptions, conditions, and
policy interventions, often taking demographic processes into account.

● Policy Options Analysis: A type of prospective policy analysis in which two or

more policy options are compared according to a clear set of criteria to assist
decision-makers.

● Politics: The process by which groups of people consisting of social relations

involving authority and power make decisions. Politics also refers to the
strategies, methods, and tactics used to formulate and execute decisions.

● Process Evaluation: A type of program evaluation that focuses on how a

program, policy, or intervention was implemented in regard to its content, quality,
and reach rather than its impacts or outcomes.

● Procure: To obtain something, typically through purchase.

● Program Evaluation: A type of descriptive or retrospective policy analysis

that generally attempts to answer the question, “Did a public program, policy, or
other intervention that was implemented work?” Program and policy evaluation
involves the systematic application of social science research procedures and
data analytics for assessing the design, implementation, effectiveness, and utility
of public interventions.

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 ● Prospective Policy Analysis: A type of prospective policy analysis in which
researchers attempt to predict or forecast specific outcomes/conditions in the
future under the status quo versus one or more policy changes.

● Public Administration: The business of running a government; the work and

means by which the purposes and goals of government are implemented and
achieved.

● Public Goods: Goods and services financed and provided by governments

without profit that provide some social benefit, are non-rival (consumption by one
person does not reduce availability to another), and are non-exclusionary (widely
available to everyone)

● Public Policy: The formal rules, laws, regulations, court rulings, and informal
programs, guidelines, recommendations, and other courses of action made by a
governmental entity, including legislatures, courts, and executive agencies.

● Public Procurement: The process by which the government acquires the goods
and services it needs by purchasing from commercial businesses.

● Public Sector: The sector of the economy that involves governmental activities
and actions, including the provision of governmental goods and services.

● Quasi-Experimental Designs: Research designs in which groups are not

randomly assigned to receive some sort of intervention or treatment to estimate
the causal effects of the intervention, but there is an attempt to create a strong
counterfactual.

● Randomized Controlled Trials: A type of experimental research design for

assessing the effectiveness of an intervention that involves randomly assigning
individuals (or some other unit) to receive the intervention or not.

● Random Assignment: In a research design, when groups are randomly

assigned to be in a treatment or control group. If groups have an equal chance of
being in any of the groups under study, then the assumption is made that the
groups are equal except for their exposure to the intervention and that any
differences observed after the intervention are due to this exposure.

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 ● Random Sample: In a research design, a random sample is when a subset of a
population is chosen randomly for observation or data collection. If everyone in
the population has an equal chance of being selected through a random process,
then the results from the random sample should be reflective of the larger
population.

● Regulation: A type of formal policy that is made by agencies in the executive

branch of government. Also referred to as rules and administrative rules.

● Referent Power: Power that comes from others wanting to emulate or be loyal to
a group or an individual.

● Research Design: The planning of scientific inquiry or a research study. A

research design includes a purpose, a unit of analysis, topics, and a time
dimension.

● Retrospective Policy Analysis: Analysis or research that attempts to answer

the question: Did a program, policy, or other intervention have any impact?
Focuses on programs, policies, and interventions after they have been
implemented.

● Reward Power: Power to reward others who comply with rules or preferences
(vulnerable to grift/bribes).

● Root cause: The fundamental reason why a problem occurs, or a set of social
conditions/circumstances exists.

● Selection [In the context of public policy evaluation/research design]: A threat to

the internal validity of a research design in which there are observed or
unobserved differences in people in different groups under study.

● Sensitivity Analysis: A test of whether uncertainty in the value or quality of

information/data inputs into a model influences the results or conclusions of the
analysis. In a sensitivity analysis, the analysis is re-run, inserting different values
of the uncertain data to see if the model results change or are “sensitive” to
changes in the variable values.

● Stakeholders: People and organizations who have an interest in an issue or

outcome.

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 ● Statistical Regression Effects (or Regression to the Mean): A threat to the
internal validity of a research design in which subjects are selected because of
their extreme position/score in a distribution, subsequent measurement will
almost always produce results closer to the mean of the overall population.

● Structural Racism: The ways in which structures (such as laws, regulations,

administrative rules, other policies, culture, and entrenched norms) serve as
design features within social systems that create differential treatment by race or
ethnicity. Structures are the scaffolding or framings that uphold systems.

● Systemic Racism: The ways in which systems within society (i.e., the criminal
justice system, social welfare system, education system, healthcare system,
transportation system, etc.) are organized and operated that create differential
access to resources, opportunities, risks, experiences, etc. by race and ethnicity.

● Summative Program Evaluation: A type of program evaluation that focuses on

the causal impacts of the program, policy, or intervention. This includes both
impact and outcome evaluation.

● Subsidy: An incentive given by the government to individuals or businesses in

the form of cash, grants, or tax breaks that improve the supply of goods and
services.

● Tax: A compulsory contribution to government revenue, levied by the

government on workers’ income and business profits, or added to the cost of
some goods, services, and transactions.

● Testing [In the context of public policy evaluation/research design]: Testing is a

potential threat to the internal validity of research design in which the fact that
people know they are being observed for research purposes (like taking a
survey) might impact a subsequent observation and this testing effect might
account for some change between observations rather than an intervention.

● Time Series Design: A quasi-experimental research design in which several

observations are made both before and after an intervention is implemented, and
then data are analyzed to see if there was a change in the slope or intercept of
the trend line at the time of the intervention.

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● Values: Broad beliefs about what is “good” and “ought” to be promoted.

Instrumental values are preferences regarding the means to desired end states.
Terminal values are preferences about the desired end states or outcomes.
Public administration and public policy involve both.

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