Theoretical Aspects of Welfare State and Social Trends of Public Policy
Keywords:
welfare state, social policy, social studies of Catholic Church, social market economy, public administration.Abstract
The article presents one of social research method - content analysis which is still scarcely known to
Lithuanian research community. Discursive nature of public policy and vast amounts of communications
expressed in different symbolic (textual, sound and visual) forms in the processes of public policy are the
key factors implying the potential fruitful use of quantitative content analysis in the research projects.
Therefore, the attempts are made to chart the framework of when and how this method might be most
efficient in the public policy analysis. The emphasis is placed on the advantages of this method. When
scientist needs to conduct extensive, comprehensive, longitudinal, unobtrusive and/or repeated analysis of
the contents of huge amount of social communications or social meanings method of content analysis is
rather useful.
