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The goal of social impact assessment is to help individuals and communities, as well as government and private-sector organizations, understand and better anticipate the possible social consequences for human populations and communities of planned and unplanned social change resulting from proposed policies, plans, programmes and projects. Like all assessments, the SIA model is comparative. We look to similar settings for direction as to what will happen in the future. Based on decades of research, we have organized SIA indicators under the general headings of population characteristics, community and institutional structures, political and social resources, individual and family changes, and community resources. The SIA process identifies alternatives to a proposed action as well as guidelines for enhancement and mitigation.

Social impact assessment (SIA) has not been widely adopted as a component of the assessment process for project or policy appraisal. This paper focuses on four issues: how we are labeling research on social impacts; what historical events led to the separation of SIA from the environmental impact assessment (EIA) process; whether the Guidelines and Principles for Social Impact Assessment helped focus the r esearch and practice of SIA; and whether there is evidence that we are accumulating a body of knowledge labeled social impact assessment. To become institutionalized EIA-SIA must be a statutory requirement, otherwise agencies and consulting firms that do EIA will not include social impacts. The requirement must extend to international bilateral aid, donor and lending agencies.Keywords: social impact assessment; social assessment; public involvement Rabel J Burdge is a Professor of Sociology and Environmental Studies,

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