Problem Analysis
Problem analysis consists of three major steps: [P1] understanding the problem; [P2] choosing and explaining relevant policy goals and constraints; and ]P3] choosing a solution method
Understanding the Problem
Understanding a policy problem involves assessing the conditions that concern your client, framing them as market or government failures, and modeling the relationship between the conditions of concern and variables that can be manipulated through public policy.
Assessing Symptoms. Clients generally experience problems as conditions that some group perceives as undesirable. They tend to specify problems to analysts in terms of these undesirable symptoms, or impacts, rather than as underlying causes. The analyst’s task is to assess the symptoms and provide an explanation [model] of how they arise.
Assessing symptoms involves determining their empirical basis. In a narrow sense, this means trying to locate data that help you put the symptoms in quantitative perspective. For example, if your client is concerned about automobile accidents in your country caused by drunk drivers, then you might try to locate data to help you estimate the number of such accidents, how the number has changed over time, what percentage of total accidents they comprise, and other measures that help you determine the magnitude, distribution, and time trend of the symptom. In a broader sense, you should become familiar with current public discussion about the symptom [read the newspaper] and the history of existing policies that are generally perceived as being relevant to it. For example, you may find that, although there has been a steady decline in the number of alcohol-related accidents in recent years, a particularly tragic accident has focused public attention on the dangers of drunk driving. Viewed in the perspective of the favorable trend, drunk driving may seems less deserving of attention than other conditions of concern to your client.
Your description and assessment of symptoms generally appears as background in your problem analysis. It conveys the relative importance and urgency of the problem, and it begins to establish your credibility as someone who is knowledgeable about it. But the assessment of symptoms alone provides an inadequate basis for your analysis. You must identify causal relationships that link the symptoms to factors that can be changed by public policy. In other words, you must frame and model the problem.