Module 09: Critical Thinking

Post-Policy Assessment (105 points)

Locate a policy that has been implemented by the Ministry of Health in Saudi Arabia in an effort to improve health.

Draft a post-policy assessment to determine whether the policy is effective and how it might be improved. Be sure to include the following information in your substantive evaluation:

• Identify the policy;
• The goals of the policy;
• Any interventions required of the policy;
• Positive and negative results of the policy, including whether the goals are being met;
• Metrics used to determine the results; and
• Recommendations for improving the policy.

Your report should meet the following structural requirements:

• Be five to six pages in length, not including the cover or reference pages.
• Be formatted according to Saudi Electronic University and APA writing guidelines.
• Provide support for your statements with in-text citations from a minimum of three scholarly articles. One of these sources may be from the class readings, textbook, or lectures, but the others must be external.
• Utilize headings to organize the content in your work.

You are strongly encouraged to submit all assignments to the Turnitin Originality Check prior to submitting them to your instructor for grading. If you are unsure how to submit an assignment to the Originality Check tool, review the Turnitin Originality Check Student Guide.

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Policy evaluation occurs when an implemented policy is examined to determine whether it is meeting its objectives and whether it is useful to society. There are different categories of standards for conducting policy evaluation that should guide the process (Centers for Disease Control [CDC], n.d.); click on the tabs to review some of these:

Utility 

Who wants the evaluation results and for what purpose?

Feasibility

 the evaluation procedures practical, given the time, resources, and expertise available?

Propriety

Is the evaluation being conducted in a fair and ethical way?

Accuracy

Are approaches at each step accurate, given stakeholder needs and evaluation purpose? (CDC, n.d., p. 2)

Thus, an evaluation should begin by answering these questions, and the answers should remain central during the evaluation process. Evaluation is circular. It begins during the drafting phase of policy and should continue throughout the life of the policy due to the changing needs of society, technology, and health.

We’ve discussed the need to evaluate policy in the draft and implementation phases. We will now turn to evaluating the impact of a given policy on society or on the selected population for which the policy is designed. Policy impact is concerned with whether the policy is producing the intended results (CDC, n.d.). An example of this might be a smoking ban in restaurants. While over the short term this policy may be intended to end smoking in restaurants, its overarching intent might be to reduce smoking in society overall. Both policy impacts—in restaurants and in the larger society—should be evaluated.

There are many different types of evaluations: process, outcome, formative, summative, cost-benefit, and cost-effectiveness evaluations (Longest, 2016). Click on the tabs to review these: