Measuring quality in social care services: theory and practice

Measuring and assessing service quality in the social care sector presents distinct challenges. The 'experience' good properties of social care, for instance, and the large influence played by subjective judgements about the quality of personal relationships between carer and user and of process-related service characteristics make it difficult to develop indicators of service quality, including those of service impact on final outcomes. Using some of the key features of the 'Production of Welfare' approach, the paper discusses recent developments in the UK of the theoretical and practical frameworks used for assessing quality in social care and for understanding the final impact of services on the wellbeing of their recipients. Key current and future challenges to the development of such frameworks include difficulties in disentangling the impact of social care services on final outcomes from the often dominating effects of other, non-service related factors, and the generalization of consumer-directed care models and of the 'personalization' of care services. These challenges are discussed in the context of the different possible applications of quality indicators, including their role as supporting the service commissioning process and their use for assessing the performance of service providers

Social Quality theory in perspective

For its theoretical development, the social quality (SQ) theory was given birth in 1997, with its original aim directed at addressing the social dimension of state-policy making in Europe, against the neo-liberal Washington consensus, and the handmaiden position of all other public policies. However, after a decade of development, this theory has been developed from various dimensions, as evidenced where SQ theories are applied to particular topics. Accordingly, the merits of this theory can be understood as a normative guideline for policy-making and practice, as a scheme of reference for understanding relevant conditional structures as the basis for this guideline, and as a socio-political goal to enable people to act in a democratic way

Experimental auctions, collective induction and choice shift: willingness-to-pay for rice quality in Senegal

We propose a collective induction treatment as an aggregator of information and preferences, which enables testing whether consumer preferences for food quality elicited through experimental auctions are robust to aggregation. We develop a two-stage estimation method based on social judgement scheme theory to identify the determinants of social influence in collective induction. Our method is tested in a market experiment aiming to assess consumers willingness-to-pay for rice quality in Senegal. No significant choice shift was observed after collective induction, which suggests that consumer preferences for rice quality are robust to aggregation. Almost three quarters of social influence captured by the model and the variables was explained by social status, market expertise and information

What is the capability approach?: its core, rationale, partners and dangers

development theory; human development; quality of life; social values; freedom;

The Winner's Curse under Behavioral Institutions

Empirically, social dilemma under information asymmetry are often much less pronounced than theory predicts. Traders experience a winner's curse and maintain efficiency enhancing exchange of commodities when theory predicts none. Especially under competition, cursed parties undergo severe losses and thereby fund social welfare. Hence, if one cures the winner's curse, one often decreases social welfare. Here, I test how market efficiency can be maintained without individual losses. In a competitive common value auction, parties sidestep both market inefficiency and a winner's curse by judging quality-by-price, and setting price-by-quality.imperfect information, common value auction, price-quality relation

Developing theoretical rigour in inter professional education

In this chapter, the author explores the meaning of theory and the role it plays in the development of interprofessional education. The chapter explores specifically the utility of the theory of social capital in the field and uses this as a case theory to present the dimensions of theoretical quality that is proposed as essential to the advancement of research, evaluation and curriculum development in this arena

Social Quality and Precarity: Approaching New Patterns of Societal (Dis)Integration

The main issue of this article is to discuss the question of ‘precarity’ in the context of the theory of social quality (see Beck et al, 2001), with which to pave the way for developing further the theoretical foundation of precarity. Societal practice is the main challenge this concept tries to address. However, the danger is to introduce a new term, yet maintaining a discussion on traditional problems as poverty, marginalisation and exclusion. Our thesis is that these problems, far from being sufficiently tackled, are currently going along with and being adjunct to another challenge, namely precarity. Although the ‘old problems’ are not problems of individuals and expression of their ‘personal failure’, precarity – seen in the context of the theory of social quality – means a new stage of socialisation of the problems by further individualisation of the victims. In principle, we can say that this understanding of precarity is an expression of a further erosion of society, characterising especially periods of transformation of economic systems.Social Quality; Precarity; Social Exclusion; Social Disintegration; Social Policy

For Benevolence and for Self-Interest: Social and Commercial Entrepreneurial Activity across Nations

We conceptualise social entrepreneurship as a source of social capital which, when present in the environment, enhances commercial entrepreneurship. We also argue that social entrepreneurship should be recognised as a second form of Baumol's (1990) productive entrepreneurship and that it will therefore compete at the individual level for resources with commercial entrepreneurship. Unlike institutional void theory, we see social entrepreneurship as conditional on institutional quality, but consistent with the institutional void perspective we see it as filling the gaps where government activism is lower. These arguments motivate our hypotheses that we test and largely confirm applying multilevel modelling. Our analysis is based on population-representative samples in 47 countries (the 2009 GEM dataset).social capital, social entrepreneurship, institutional theory, resources, socio-cognitive theory

Evaluating the articulation of programme theory in practice as observed in Quality Improvement initiatives

Background: The Action-Effect Method(AEM) was co-developed by NIHR CLAHRC Northwest London (CLAHRC NWL) researchers and QI practitioners, building on Driver Diagrams(DD). This study aimed to determine AEM effectiveness in terms of technical aspects (how diagrams produced in practice compared with theoretical ideals) and social aspects (how engagement with the method related to social benefits). Methods Diagrams were scored on criteria developed on theoretical ideals of programme theory. 65 programme theory diagrams were reviewed (21 published Driver Diagrams (External DDs), 22 CLAHRC NWL Driver Diagrams (Internal DDs), and 21 CLAHRC NWL Action-Effect Diagrams(AEDs)). Social functions were studied through ethnographic observation of frontline QI teams in AEM sessions facilitated by QI experts. Qualitative analysis used inductive and deductive coding. Results ANOVA indicated the AEM significantly improved the quality of programme theory diagrams over Internal and External DDs on an average of 5 criteria from an 8-point assessment. Articulated aims were more likely to be patient-focused and high-level in AEDs than DDs. The cause/effect relationships from intervention to overall aim also tended to be clearer and were more likely than DDs to contain appropriate measure concepts. Using the AEM also served several social functions such as facilitating dialogue among multidisciplinary teams, and encouraging teams to act scientifically and pragmatically about planning and measuring QI interventions. Implications: The Action-Effect Method developed by CLAHRC NWL resulted in improvements over Driver Diagrams in articulating programme theory, which has wide-ranging benefits to quality improvement, including encouraging broad multi-disciplinary buy-in to clear aims and pre-planning a rigorous evaluation strategy