Philippine E-Journals

Comprehensive Trace Processing:A Qualitative Innovation in Social ScienceCase Study Analysis

Wesley Evan Kendall

Discipline: Social Science

 

Abstract:

This paper proposes a new social science orientedmethodological approach to examining the behaviour of differentpolicymaker’s actions in the process of shaping and implementingpublic policies. Under this new model, the policymakers’behavior constitutes the dependent variable under observation in the studywhile various external mechanisms are treated as independentvariables acting to manipulate policy outcomes. Each of the objectsstudied in their respective models, as well as each of the externalmechanisms, are inextricably intertwined in the political systemswhich enact, adjudicate, and ultimately implement policy. As complexorganizations, these dependent variables are infinitely complicatedand their behavioural patterns subject to multiple independent variableimpacts. This proposed case study model will focus on individual casesthat allow for an in depth examination of events and draw inferentialcausal connections using a number of innovative techniques. Themechanisms of policy change, or the independent variables, willadditionally be explored using a case study analysis and interveningcausal factors will be carefully examined by using within case analysisto plot interrelationships among event observations. The validity of ahypothesis would be rigorously tested by both within-case analyses,and will be supplemented by a comparative cross-case analysis whenappropriate, and further bolstered by a novel interview process toreject or reinforce inferential assumptions drawn from the model.This unique combination of qualitative testing methodologies whenapplied in linear sequence creates a rigorous analytical frameworkwith enhanced internal, and external model validity that can beutilized across social science disciplines.