ABSTRACT
The assessment of the social Impacts of resource development is an often neglected and ill-defined area of impact assessment. The term social generally refers to the processes and products of human interaction. Social impacts can thus be defined as impacts that affect the patterns of interaction, the formal and informal relationships resulting from such interactions, and the perceptions of such relationships among various groups in a social setting. Theoretical development in the area of social assessment has been extremely limited, and few impact assessment or research efforts acknowledge that a particular conceptual approach underlies the effort. Since certain paradigms and viewpoints inevitably underlie any research effort, it is possible from an examination of social assessment research efforts to discern the conceptional bases underlying such efforts. The methodological approaches used in impact assessment reflect those widely used in the social sciences generally, as well as approaches that have received renewed development within the area of assessment research.
