Policy Research and Evaluation

Running head: POLICY RESEARCH AND EVALUATION
POLICY RESEARCH AND EVALUATION
Name of the Student
Name of the university
Author’s note

POLICY RESEARCH AND EVALUATION1
V. Purpose of the policy evaluation
The policy evaluation is mainly done to look at the reason for which the policy has been
adopted in the first place and to determine whether the policy planning is a success or a failure. If
the policy is a success, then it will always be supervised and appraised as the legal environment.
A policy which has failed should keep in to consideration, whether or not the foundation of the
policy was based on correct, incorrect or unanticipated data. If the data used for the creation of
the policies in the first place is improper then a well-planned program is also bound to fail. An
environmental change in workplace also lead to a failure of the policy in a short period of time.
The rationale behind this policy is the high smoking rate in the society that has led to
poor health among the young people and the pregnant women. It has been found that the
smoking rates have dramatically increased with time, 8% of the people still smoke risking a
lifetime of health. About 10 % of the women still smoke, with all the attendant risk of
miscarriage, still births and neonatal complexities (International Agency for Research on Cancer,
& World Health Organization, 2008). Although the government’s tobacco control plan for
England had set out an ambition for achieving a generation that is smoke free, meaning a
smoking prevalence of 5 % of the population, However, the evidence is quite clear that for this to
be delivered needs comprehensive and integrated government and public sector action for
funding and ensuring an effective tobacco control. There had been positive proposals in the
tobacco control plan, but the public health funding was not sufficient enough for supporting the
plan, and hence the support has declined within a year (International Agency for Research on
Cancer, & World Health Organization, 2008). The over reliant plan became so unrealistic during
the time of budget restraints in the local authorities. The commitment in the long term plan of the
NHS is for the funding to help the smokers being treated in the NHS, but this is too only a part of

POLICY RESEARCH AND EVALUATION2
he solution and not only one solution. It has already been pointed out that the public spending
would become constrained due to the fact and new ways have to be found in order to increase the
funds (International Agency for Research on Cancer, & World Health Organization, 2008). The
plan should therefore concentrate on what can be done by the central government for supporting
the delivery of a smoke free future throughout the communities.
United Kingdom had been trying their best to reduce the crime related to smoking. As
claimed by the government of United Kingdom, the smoking prevalence has reduce substantially
with the previous smoking plan, but as per the sources, there had been not much progress. It is
due to the failure of the plan and the increased rate of the smoking among the adolescent group
and pregnant women provides a strong rational for the evaluation of the policy.
VI. Description of the conceptual approach to the taken for the policy evaluation and its
appropriateness
When the policies are not implemented as per the anticipated aims and the objectives, a
common policy response is the introduction of the reforms aiming at the control of the tobacco
installation plan. I such a condition, evaluation might involve a top down approach that is
principally concerned for promoting responsibility and compliance with the implementation
targets. System methodology can be an appropriate way for the evaluation of the policy (Caffrey
& Munro, 2017).
The systems approach conceptual framework consists of a broad church that spans a
multiple discipline such that General systems theory that has been prepared by the biologist, von
Bertalanffy, Cybernetics, pioneered by Ashby, a psychiatrist and Bateson, who is an
anthropologist; System Dynamics, developed by Forrester, a computer engineer. Thee diverse

POLICY RESEARCH AND EVALUATION3
school are collaborated and united by their focus of understandings. It is shown how the different
factors are connected to each other in a system. It should be mentioned that they are also unified
by the idea of emergence as a whole, which states that connections between parts of a system can
generate developing properties which cannot be comprehended by investigating each of the parts
in isolation (World Health Organization, 2013). A systems approach hence emphasizes on the
functional abstraction instead of structural decomposition. The systems application in the sector
of assessment has emphasized on the general ideas of interrelations, boundaries and perspectives.
In the context of the evaluation, the concepts actually associate with the understanding of the
inter relationships linked with the situation. It also involves engagement with contrasting
perspective related to a condition and reflection on the limitations of such a representation and
the interactions (Weimer & Vining, 2017).
A systems approach in the evaluation of the policy is of use as they appoint authors from
the other schools of thought. However, there had been arguments over the fact that the systems
approach is “too wordy” and abstracted. As argued by Caffrey & Munro, (2017), a systems
approach fits well with analysis at the micro level. It has also been claimed that the systems
approaches can result in risky attribution of all the accountability to the system. It is necessary to
determine how the interventions had been working and diagnosing a problem that either prevent
them from working in the desired way . In order to do this, one should consider the totality of the
effects both incidental and intentional. For an effective evaluation, we need to consider what
effects might occur, design studies, allowing the detection of the effects in the variable of
interests and making of valid casual inferences regarding the contribution of the interventions.
An evaluation should start with a theoretical evaluation of how an intervention should
actually work. Often there might be only one clear theoretical mechanism that is generally