Policy Change as a Latent Variable and Three Ways to Measure It

Policy change is one of the core variables of interest in policy process research. At the same time, policy change has been differently operationalized in the research literature, which makes it different to compare empirical results across theoretical frameworks and contexts. In this article, we conceptualize policy change as a latent variable that is not directly measurable but needs to be operationalized through manifest variables. We propose four manifest variables that constitute the latent concept of policy change: regulatory depth, financial expenditures, changed actor constellations, translation of policy core beliefs. To empirically assess whether this latent concept is valid, we triangulate three methods of measuring these manifest variables, taking the example of German health policy. Firstly, we ask experts of the policy sector to evaluate for different reforms to what extent they are characterized by one of these elements. Secondly, we analyze the parliamentary discourses surrounding these reforms to single out the terms that are connected to these different reforms, to allow for a narrative measurement of the manifest variables. Thirdly, we qualitatively investigate the reforms to evaluate the extent to which they resulted in these dimensions of policy change. Our findings show to what extent the measurements of policy change overlap and therefore provide a valid operationalization that is potentially applicable to different contexts and cases. We discuss challenges of these measurements, particularly time lags and the assessment of policy core beliefs.