Our white papers, issue briefs, and articles spotlight areas of improvement for social policies and programs, changing the way we see the world a little bit at a time.
Our white papers, issue briefs, and articles spotlight areas of improvement for social policies and programs, changing the way we see the world a little bit at a time.
This Needs Assessment Toolkit helps SNAP State agencies meet program requirements and enhance their existing needs assessment capabilities. The toolkit offers suggestions to increase the diversity of voices involved throughout the needs assessment process and strategies to link needs assessment findings to State goals and SNAP-Ed programming. The Needs Assessment process is organized into 6 stages including: 1) Plan needs assessment; 2) Collect and assess existing data sources; 3) Plan primary data collection activities; 4) Conduct data collection; 5) Analyze data and synthesize findings; and 6) Determine State priority goals
Download
While evaluation evidence is the best evidence for identifying “what works,” it is still imperfect. In evidence-based policymaking, the imperfections create a significant risk we will implement programs that do not work, and we will suffocate programs that do—or at least can—work. Numerous factors, including limitations of external validity, an overreliance on p-values and hypothesis testing, underpowered research, and even our intolerance for false positives can lead to incorrect conclusions. This paper discusses various ways evidence-based decisions can still be bad decisions. The paper identifies two trends that can address these shortcomings: the use of Bayesian statistical methods and continuous quality improvement. The paper concludes with six recommendations for strengthening evidence-based policymaking.
Download