The authors were involved in the development of a decision support system
(DSS) to help development agency staff determine when impact assessment
was required in development cooperation projects. They were required to
specify a comprehensive listing of social impacts for inclusion in the DSS.
Initially, a set of variables was to be compiled through a meta-analysis of
previously published lists of social impact variables.However, a high degree
of inconsistency between such lists, and internal inconsistency in many of
the lists, meant that a systematic reconsideration of the nature of social
impacts was called for.