A particular aspect of the A07 project is the application of case vignettes to investigate the inclusiveness of different benefits schemes in a selected sample of countries. The goal is to identify and assess the legislative strength and relevance of various factors influencing eligibility, with particular attention to care needs, cognitive limitations, and socio-economic conditions. To properly discuss the implementation and select the variables and eligibility conditionalities to include in the vignettes, the A07 team is organising two workshops with a group of renowned international experts with extensive knowledge on the topic of long-term care, who agreed to support and consult the team throughout the process.
Using vignette cases allows for combining the details and complexity of real-life scenarios with experimental designs’ variable modifications, which in turn provides the chance to assess the relevance of a single variable. While this methodology is mainly applied to interpret individual judgement, beliefs, and intended conduct, team A07’s approach to the methodology is different as it profiles the method to be used in the field of social policy, where vignette studies are still underused. In this application, the vignettes present different carefully constructed profiles of people needing long-term care through constructed descriptions, including various aspects of needs for care, economic situation, family constitution, and living conditions. The vignettes, obtained by the symmetrical and orthogonal combination of the selected variables from these fields, are then going to be presented through a questionnaire to a group of respondents with in-depth knowledge of the single long-term care systems eligibility assessment methodologies to evaluate which benefits could be granted to the different profiles in each country. Against the background of the A07 project’s aim, which pays particular attention to the risk of dementia in long-term care, the role of the syndrome in granting potential access to benefit schemes will be under scrutiny.
The results will then be analysed quantitatively to identify correlations between specific conditionalities and the inclusion in the target population for particular types of benefits.
The first and more informational meeting took place on Thursday, the 23rd of March, 2023. It produced a fascinating discussion on the methodology and the aspects and factors that need to be considered to make the application of the method feasible while balancing the intrinsic trade-off between depth and case complexity that using vignettes requires. Building on the feedback obtained in the first meeting, the A07 team plans to organise a draft formulation of the different vignettes and the questionnaire for data collection. The second meeting with the consulting experts will take place on the 24th of May, 2023, and will focus on reviewing and refining the drafted vignettes before finalising the questionnaire.
Contact:
Prof. Dr. Simone Leiber
CRC 1342: Global Dynamics of Social Policy, Faculty of Education
Universitätsstraße 2
45141 Essen
Phone: +49 201 183-2319
E-Mail: simone.leiber@uni-due.de
Prof. Dr. Heinz Rothgang
CRC 1342: Global Dynamics of Social Policy
Mary-Somerville-Straße 3
28359 Bremen
Phone: +49 421 218-58557
E-Mail: rothgang@uni-bremen.de
