Collaborative Research: An Ethnographic Study of Local-level Policy Implementation Diversity

University Of Colorado At Denver-Downtown Campus, Denver CO

Investigators

Abstract

The research supported by this award investigates the outcomes of cross-scale interactions in contemporary state societies. This is an important scientific question because when policy is developed at national and state levels it may be assumed that it will be translated and implemented locally as intended. However, given the known diversity of the United States, it is likely that this is not always the case. Therefore, it is important to identify the pathways by which policies devolve and how they interact with variability both within and between communities. Findings from this research will be of value not only to social scientists who study the changing nature of complex societies but also to policy makers who must take this complexity into account for their policies and programs to achieve their goals. The research will be conducted by anthropologists Sarah B. Horton (University of Colorado at Denver) and Whitney L. Duncan (University of Northern Colorado). The researchers have chosen to focus on local perceptions of health care service availability as a case study of policy devolution. They will undertake a comparative, longitudinal investigation of how specific residents in two different sites in Colorado, one urban and one rural, connect with and understand the availability of health care services for chronic diseases. Policies are standard across the state but are mediated by different local institutional, historical, and sociocultural contexts. The goal is to see what difference those contexts make. Working cooperatively with local clinics, they will collect data through interviews and participant observation with local stakeholders, patients, and health care staff. They will also analyze local media accounts and relevant documents. Findings from this research will be valuable for policy makers, service providers, and service users. The research will also enrich social scientific understanding of the complex functioning of the contemporary state and the different ways in which citizenship is made concrete at the local level. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.