Evaluating Public Policy Formation and Support Mechanisms for Technological Innovation

Abstract

Policy evaluation is a complex task. Most approaches now adopt a mixed method approach combining both quantitative and qualitative techniques. A shortcoming of the standard approaches is that they fail to measure or investigate deeper perceptions of the policy. In this paper the usefulness of projective techniques as a tool for policy evaluation is investigated. Projective techniques are widely used in psychology and consumer studies but their usefulness in policy evaluation has still to be assessed. A simple evaluation is done in this paper by reporting on a study of owner-managers of tradeable-services small and medium size enterprises attitudes to Government e-business policy. The survey included firms from Northern Ireland, Republic of Ireland and New Zealand. Traditional quantitative and qualitative survey techniques were used, however these failed to produce conclusive evidence. To overcome this limitation two projective techniques-word association and completion tests were employed as an additional evaluation method. The paper illustrates how the results of projective techniques can be analysed using both context and matrix analysis. Given that the area of e-business is dynamic and fast changing and that SMEs are extremely heterogeneous, it is argued that the application of projective techniques to assess their attitudes and perceptions of government policy is a good test of the usefulness of the method. The results of the projective techniques lead to more insight into the perceptions and attitudes of the owner-managers and provide interesting individual perspectives into the issues. Problems with the method, such as costs, the level of skill needed to apply the technique and generalization are highlighted. The overall conclusions are that projective techniques could provide an interesting additional tool for policy evaluation and that further assessment of its usefulness is needed.

An Application of Fuzzy Logic to Assess Service Quality Attributes in Logistics Industry

“…Progressive economies are dominantly becoming more service alerted and the growing share of the service sector is evident in all aspects (McKee 2008;Ramsey, Bond 2007). No one can neglect the vital role of the service sector and service related issues in growing economies and for the growth of the countries.…”

The role of information and communication technologies in using projective techniques as survey tools to meet the challenges of bounded rationality

“…Whilst it seems that projective techniques have an active role to play in policy research a pilot study (Ramsey and Bond, 2007) highlights many issues that need to be addressed. The issues include: design of stimuli, reliability and validity, methods of distribution, methods of recording and storing responses, methods of analysis and interpretation.…”

“…The main attraction of projective techniques is their apparent data elicitation capabilities which have the ability to bring to the surface or uncover the sub-conscious beliefs and attitudes of respondents (Boddy, 2005;Ramsey and Bond, 2007). They are subject-oriented, non-verbal and indirect self-reporting techniques that have the ability to capture responses from people in a less structured and more imaginative way.…”

“…Qualitative approaches can prove to be insufficient to obtain much insight into the issues raised by quantitative studies. Thus, in face-to-face interviews respondents' often constrain their discussion of the issues and seem QMRIJ 13,4 to provide answers that are of a "politically correct" nature because they are what they expected the interviewer to want (Rogers and Beal, 1958;Ramsey and Bond, 2007). In many studies the non-verbal observations give the impression that respondents may be uncomfortable about discussing some issues.…”

“…In many studies the non-verbal observations give the impression that respondents may be uncomfortable about discussing some issues. Early indications are (Ramsey and Bond, 2007) that projective techniques can overcome these data elicitation problems in policy research.…”