KAFP 6275 - Policy Analysis and Policy Evaluation - beginner level

The "Policy Analysis and Policy Assessment" course offers its students a theoretical understanding of all the tools needed to perform a policy assessment in the real world. It starts from an introduction of the statistical and conceptual foundations of policy analysis, explaining the reasons for policy evaluation. Students will explore how policy analysis operates in practice, examining who conducts evaluations, the structured workflow of policy evaluation, and what assessing policies entails. The course provides an overview of methodologies available for policy assessment, from developing analytical frameworks to evaluating outcomes. Traditional methods, such as surveys and interviews, will be discussed alongside advanced techniques like machine learning approaches. Practical skills, including effective report writing, will also be developed to prepare students for real-world policy analysis challenges. The course is structured as interactive lectures, with active student engagement encouraged. Each concept or methodology will be illustrated with real-life examples and sometimes with R examples.

Professor:
Elena Cossu is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Centre for European Studies and Comparative Politics at SciencesPo and a researcher for the Horizon AuthLIB project, which examines the origins and consequences of normative deviations from the liberal democracy model in Europe. Her current research involves utilizing Large Language Models to classify illiberalism in text data. Previously, Elena was a Senior Policy Evaluation Researcher at the National Centre for Social Research in the UK. She conducted policy evaluations for entities such as the Ministry of Justice, The National Lottery Community Fund, the UK Department for Education, the Education Endowment Foundation, and the Department for Health and Social Care (DHSC). Her work primarily focused on using quasi-experiments to measure the effects of policies, which was also the subject of her PhD at Corvinus University in partnership with University College London.

Elena COSSU

Cours magistral seul

English

No prior knowledge of software (RStudio, STATA, etc.) is required or policy methods is required.

Autumn 2024-2025

The final grade will rest on three components:
- Mid-term exam: Multiple Choice Questionnaire on the first five lecture content (40% of final mark)
- Group work to be completed at home and handed in by (date to be agreed) (40% of final mark).
Multiple Choice Questionnaire on the last five lectures during the last class (20% of final mark).