When you are working on policy development, there is a high chance that at some point you will have to do a situation analysis. What do you do?
We generally use the following steps when doing a situation analysis:
- Have a first pass at unpacking the problem, identifying its size, severity and its causes. How does it manifest in different situations (e.g. locally vs nationally)? Look at this from a range of different perspectives.
- Delve into the views and experiences of stakeholders. Who is affected? How are they affected? What do they say? How do they experience it? Consider those directly affected (e.g. clients or service users) as well as opinion leaders in your specific area.
- Go outside the direct problem domain to describe the broad context in which the problem exists. For example, what is the state of the economy? Is the concern about your issue increasing? Are the statistics for your issue increasing? Is there any money in the budget? What are the social expectations? Is there a clear political mandate? The areas you interrogate will depend on your particular issue.
- Document existing strategies, activities, services, initiatives that aim to address the problem. Is there any evidence for their effectiveness? How much do they cost?
- Identify who is active in the area. Who is trying to solve the same problem? What are they doing? Is there a possible partner/s that might be able to assist you at some point?
- What factors might be inhibiting or facilitating behaviour change?
For each step, you will need to use a combination of evidence and experience.
- Evidence is pretty clear—that’s the available statistics, research findings, results of program evaluation, analysis of key factors and so on.
- You will also need to consider experience—that’s not just yours, but other people’s experience, including public views, what experts say, client experience and so on. This gives you a more complete picture of your problem.
The aim is to develop a clear, detailed, realistic picture of the opportunities, resources, challenges and barriers affecting your specific issue.
It also helps to have a plan about which aspects are most important for your project.
Without a plan, gathering relevant evidence can slip into burrowing down rabbit holes and taking far too long. Consider whether you need to do this in two stages:
- Stage 1: A first quick pass using readily available information. Determine how long you need to spend on this process: if you have a two-week project, you may need 1-2 days; if it is a longer project, maybe a week or two. At the end you will have a sense of the major factors you need to consider and something that you can discuss with your project sponsor to make sure you are on the right track.
- Stage 2: Revisiting the information in more depth. In this stage, you will take the factors that are most important and delve further. There are different ways of exploring including: literature reviews; research synthesis; modelling; interviewing experts or stakeholders; cohort analysis; benchmarking; data analysis.
Well-designed situation analyses support better response design and better decision making. It takes time, but if done with thought pays off.
