The assignment is designed to help you hone critical policy analysis skills, especially the ability to appraise opposing arguments and positions. Knowing your opponent is always a critical skill in advocacy.

In this assignment you will search for and select two brief policy statements relating (they do not need to be directly related and they should be more specific than broad) to Your Social Policy Issue. These could be policy or position statements by organizations, politicians, Op Eds, agencies, or similar statements. You may already have found statements in Step 2 that will work. Try to find statements that do not agree on the issue. That is, a statement that you consider pro and and a statement you consider con. If you cannot find opposing statements, at least try to find statements that take a different approach to their arguments. You will be using hypothes.is for this assignment so your statement will have to be textual or a digital source.

In this exercise your task is to critically question the statements/arguments, not to take a side or argue for your own position. For example, if your issue is policies governing practices on elder guardianship you may decide to narrow your policy to pro and con arguments about protections versus risk. 

To assure that you have a good grasp on your issue think about these the questions describing the policy: On what basis? Does who? Do what? To whom? For how long? Toward what end (intended)? At what cost? At what benefit? With what effects (unintended)?

Not all statements will address all of these but you should keep them in mind because at times the absence or lack of acknowledgement of a critical issue can reveal a gray area or deliberate obfuscation. For example, an opponent of a policy may dismiss the question of benefit and focus solely on the cost.

For now, try to include in your analysis these three questions:

• On what basis? That is, what view of human nature and social relationships is expressed in the policy statement?
• At what cost? This can be expressed in dollar terms but is often expressed in moral or legalistic terms.
• At what benefit? This can be expressed in terms of individual benefits but can also be expressed directly or indirectly in terms of organizational benefits, e.g., maintaining order.