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Study masters degree online with Macquarie University through Open Universities Australia. Explore all degrees, subjects and short courses now.

With its dual focus on policy analysis and applied social research, the Master of Public and Social policy (OUA) is a unique and innovative course in Australia. Through your studies, you will develop a deep knowledge of how policy is shaped, as well as the skills to help you analyse, design and deliver effective policy solutions to serve the public interest. You will also acquire the knowledge and skills to engage with and undertake research addressing global challenges facing contemporary societies, including sustainable communities, welfare reform, immigration, population health, drugs and alcohol.

Take a dual focus towards policy and social research. Learn how policy is shaped, before gaining skills to design and deliver your own. Use research to address sustainable communities, welfare, immigration, population health and more.

Master of Public and Social Policy

Qualitative Methods for Policy

Evaluating Social Policy

Doing Social Survey Research

This subject was previously known as SOCX830 Doing Social Survey Research.This is a subject in applied survey research and data analysis. It will explain key survey techniques used and give you the chance to try them out in practice. The unit covers choosing survey methods, administering surveys and writing good survey questions. It also looks at some of the debates around the potentials and limits of surveys. Qualitative researchers often rely on surveys to prepare themselves for fieldwork or to &#39;triangulate&#39; their results from interview work. But ultimately, surveys are designed to enable statistical analysis of data, and therefore the unit covers some of the statistical techniques used. Understanding how quantitative analytical methods work with and augment qualitative methods requires some knowledge and use of statistics and a statistical package.

This subject focuses on how policy is made and who makes it.Taking an international perspective, the subject introduces students to the policy process, the state and societal actors that cooperate (and fight) over policy and to the context in which they operate. Students will engage in peer learning, discuss cases studies as well as write on policy issues using the materials and concepts presented in the subject.

Advanced Introduction to Policy

This subject was previously known as GEOX802 Social Impact Assessment and Cross-Cultural Negotiation.Social impact assessment (SIA) is an important assessment tool which applies social science methodologies to the evaluation of a wide range of public policy proposals, including those relating to land use planning, social policies and public health. This unit addresses the theory and methods of SIA, discusses the public policy processes which use this assessment, and applies a critical perspective to the ethical dilemmas facing the SIA practitioner. There is a practical focus to the course work through the use of current case studies, and this provides students with an insight into pressures and political difficulties frequently encountered. Students will learn how to recognise and respond to these problems, and present issues to non-specialist audiences.

Understand how social impact assessment can help stakeholders with different world-views find common ground.Explore the difficulties that can arise during cross-cultural negotiations. Pick apart case studies that deal with issues like native title.

Social Impact Assessment

This unit examines a range of issues relevant to the understanding of how policies are made in increasingly entwined national and international contexts, considering international and domestic institutions and actors. Assessment will be based on constructive and informed participation, tests on the readings and a research paper. The unit will be taught as a series of modules that may include: Select critical topics framing contemporary policy-making, such as migration flows, climate change, populism, national and global inequalities, austerity, liberalisation and digitalisation. International policy actors and institutions, contexts and modes of governance, including policy transfer processes. Policy-making in non-democracies and democratization processes, political economy of welfare states Varieties of capitalism

Making Public Policy in a Globalised World

Policies embody ideas about what governments can and should do, and how. These ideas &#39;frame&#39; the problems policies address and how those problems will be solved. Policy ideas vary between policy domains and between countries and they change over time. Policy ideas are mobilised and contested by policy actors seeking changes that align with their own interests or those of their constituencies. When new ideas enter the policy process, they may offer genuinely novel solutions to old problems or renew the attractiveness of discarded approaches. New ideas can also function as solutions in search of problems. In this unit, students study policy documents and research resources to gain a critical understanding of how ideas can frame the definition of policy problems and their solutions. Because policy ideas travel, the unit considers the mechanisms and actors involved in what researchers call policy transfer or policy mobilities. The unit is taught as a series of modules, each exploring the history, contours and impacts of one of a broad-ranging set of ideas that has come into public and social policy in recent decades. Ideas in focus may include a subset of: brain and mind sciences, New Public Management, big data and governance by algorithm, social investment and asset-based social policy, partnership, sustainability, resilience, and well-being.

Policy Ideas in Focus: Framing Policy Problems

This subject was previously known as SOCX831 Qualitative Methods for Policy.
Social research is critical for evidence based policy making. This unit canvasses the use of qualitative research to inform public and social policy. Students will develop skills in conducting qualitative research and how it contributes to policy processes. This includes designing and conducting qualitative research and working with existing qualitative data to develop policy. The course will be structured around four modules. The first examines qualitative research designs for policy. The second introduces students to qualitative research methods and analysis, including qualitative analysis of policy documents. The third applies this knowledge to policy processes, including finding and using existing qualitative data sets; qualitative research as consultation; and the uses and misuses of citizen perspectives in policy processes. The unit concludes by considering how qualitative and quantitative data can be combined as policy evidence. Throughout, the unit will include expert speakers from the non-profit, government and academic sectors to provide insider perspectives on the use of qualitative data for policy making and to discuss the politics of research utilization. By undertaking this course, students will develop advanced skills in undertaking qualitative research and be able to apply these skills in a range of policy settings.

This subject was previously known as SOCX818 Evaluation and the Policy Process.Evaluation research is among the most common, and possibly most useful, forms of applied social science. Evaluation employs research methodologies to systematically assess a project, policy, program or social needs to set criteria. This unit surveys key topics and practice-based skills widely used in evaluation research that have potential applications in the public, non-profit, and for-profit private sectors. As this field of research is expansive, the unit primarily draws on case studies from social policy - public interventions that offer protection from social ills and are among those that impact most on everyday life - to provide focus for class sessions and assessments. Over the course of this unit, you will gain a clear understanding of key elements of evaluation research design, as well as the potential uses and misuses of this form of applied social policy research.

This unit requires students to draw on theoretical and discipline knowledge and use these to engage actively in a current and topical policy problem. The students will have opportunities to consult experts in a given policy area and identify relevant evidence, expert opinion and stakeholder views. Students will explore a range of problem definitions and scenarios, and consider alternative policy solutions. Students will develop and present a comprehensive and constructive policy proposal which demonstrates an awareness of ethical, political, social, economic and cultural factors which are significant in the specific policy context.

Policy Design: Concepts and Case Studies

The study of public policy has traditionally been focused on the nation-state, and policy-making activities at the domestic level. However, national policy-makers are increasingly focused on international policy challenges. Using a series of detailed case studies, this unit reflects critically on debates around globalisation and the state. The unit introduces students to the policy process and explores the impact of international institutions, interests and ideas on domestic policy-making. The unit examines direct and indirect, coercive and voluntary mechanisms of policy transfer, diffusion and mobility, as well as the factors that shape patterns of intergovernmental cooperation and coordination.

Policy Making in a Global Era

This subject was previously known as POIX207 Governance, Power and Public Policy.This subject introduces students to contemporary debates about how public policy problems are addressed. It does this by tracing the change from government to governance and considers the range of policy instruments now regularly used to respond to policy problems. This includes, for example, the use of market based solutions in a range of policy areas. Students are also introduced to key actors and institutions, as well as to relevant theories for analysing public policy.

Get a thorough overview of the process of developing Australian government policy. Query the role of the public service. Shine a light on dilemmas that can arise. Draw on local examples that illustrate the complexity of the policy-making process.

Governance, Power and Public Policy

Macquarie University

Macquarie University Masters Degree Public policy Courses & Degrees | Open Universities Australia

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