2000115-Strengthening-Communities-with-Neighborhood-Data

138 Strengthening Communities with Neighborhood Data
• Policy analysis and planning use the data to formulate courses of
action (adopting new laws as well as designing new programs) in
response to findings from the situation analysis and to assess the
advantages and disadvantages of alternatives. The process entails
alternative courses of actions (represented by the policy instrument
indicators, taking into account nonmanipulative descriptive indicators)
and assessing their likely results (outcome and side-effect
indicators) via a theory of change based on explicit assumptions
about cause-and-effect relationships (analytic indicators).
• Performance management and evaluation assess trends in performance
and relevant aspects of the context and use the data as a
basis for making midcourse corrections and for subsequent evaluation.
This means monitoring change for all the types of indicators
in the system, reporting results, and in effect reentering an analytically
based planning mode to adjust the course of action for the
period ahead.
• Education and engagement use the information and analysis already
developed in the categories above to influence (most often, to build
support for) a proposed agenda. For example, the presentation of
data may be used to engage residents in crime-prevention programs
or make the case to government agencies, philanthropies, and the
public at large for financial and other support for an agenda.
• Neighborhood research uses data to improve the understanding
of how the overall social system works by examining changes in
indicators and their interactions. This sheds light on the patterns
of cause and effect through which social interventions and other
forces interact to influence outcomes. One of the key forces is the
effect of neighborhood conditions on individual outcomes.
In today’s best practice, the process of information use in managing
a collective agenda is quite consistent with Land’s concept. The basic
elements of this process work whether the agenda at hand is the limited
work program of one social service agency or that of a large-scale,
long-term, multifaceted, collaborative effort to improve distressed
neighborhoods.
Below we offer descriptions of each of the five types of applications
to clarify how they work, and we also note suggestions being made today
to improve practice in each area. Chapters 5 and 6 will provide more