ABSTRACT
All the analytical and methodological problems in social impact assessment (SIA) are often dwarfed by a problem little addressed in the SIA literature and seldom addressed elsewhere either. This is the problem of communicating the results of social and environmental analysis in an understandable and useful manner to decision makers, bureaucrats, and the interested public. Problems arise when either inadequate information is too easily accepted, or more commonly, when good quality studies are rejected because the social part of communication is slighted. The problems of getting SIA into the policy arena are explored by C. P. Wolf. He argues that there are three levels of assessment on which SIA should operate: the policy level, the program level, and the project level. Wolf goes on to break down SIA into a social criterion problem and an analytic problem. He concludes by describing SIA in terms of a series of simple and useful questions.
