Paper short abstract:

Paper long abstract:

Historically, the relationship between applied social policy and qualitative research has been ambivalent at best – ranging from outright contempt (‘pretty little stories’) through being ignored altogether to condescension (‘useful for generating hypotheses’). Thankfully the situation has improved to the extent that qualitative research, if not recognised wholeheartedly as an equal partner in applied policy investigation, at least stands on the threshold of recognition. Some groups of policy makers are coming to an appreciation that empirical facts may provide information but, if devoid of meaning, they provide remarkably little guidance about what policy decisions to reach; furthermore, that qualitative information by its nature is meaning and that the qualitative interview is the prime source of meaning for policy issues.

At the same time, the (illusion of a) truce that is believed to have marked the end of the quant/qual ‘paradigm wars’ in the academic sphere cannot be said to have been extended to the policy sphere. Policy makers in the main remain more comfortable with numbers. What is considered to be ‘qualitative’ data can be the appendix at the end of a questionnaire where people have the option of writing in a few short statements or words, which are then categorized and toted up. The ‘qualitative’ interview tends to be a semi structured interview whose transcript is analyzed by the ingenuous categorizing routines of CADQAS systems. The true in-depth qualitative interview along with the wilder reaches of qualitative research remains as firmly ostracized as ever. The supplanting of ‘dissemination’ by ‘impact’ in the RAE/REF pantheon is a supplanting by quantitative impact.

However, it does not follow that one can blame this state of affairs on the lack of intelligence or laziness of civil servants and the venality of those who seek to service them. The crux of the uptake of policy analysis is not only meaning, but a genuine and real need for evaluation. Until the qualitative interview can develop as a means of evaluating policies as well as understanding their perception, it will continue to be relegated to a second class status.