Populations with less-than-sympathetic groups

Policy practitioners should know that being forewarned is being forearmed. You should know how to diagnose an audience, develop a persuasive strategy, have a ”tactics tool bag” for dealing with difficult or expert audiences, and know how to develop non-confrontational communication methods with audiences when necessary. In short, you need to know how to skillfully defend the creative policy proposal you are about to present and how to talk to policy makers who may not be interested in the issues you are presenting.

In this Discussion, you explore and analyze strategies and ideas for presenting policy proposals.

To Prepare: Think about strategies you can use to persuade others who might not share the same concerns about your issues or your policy proposals. Think about how you might defend your position on an issue or a policy and get them to agree with your perspective. Review Chapter 9 of your text, paying special attention to the section entitled ”Combative Persuasion in Step 5 and Step 6” from pages 286-292.

BY DAY 3

Post your responses to the following question:

Policy advocates sometimes find themselves discussing the needs of vulnerable populations with less-than-sympathetic groups of policy makers. Vulnerable populations might include families living in poverty, individuals with histories in the criminal justice system, or groups who have recently immigrated.

How might you communicate the needs of vulnerable populations to policy makers who may not share your views about the need for services?

Be sure to support your post with specific references to this week’s resources. If you are using additional articles, be sure to provide full APA-formatted citations for your references.

You must proofread your paper. But do not strictly rely on your computer’s spell-checker and grammar-checker; failure to do so indicates a lack of effort on your part and you can expect your grade to suffer accordingly. Papers with numerous misspelled words and grammatical mistakes will be penalized. Read over your paper – in silence and then aloud – before handing it in and make corrections as necessary. Often it is advantageous to have a friend proofread your paper for obvious errors. Handwritten corrections are preferable to uncorrected mistakes.

Use a standard 10 to 12 point (10 to 12 characters per inch) typeface. Smaller or compressed type and papers with small margins or single-spacing are hard to read. It is better to let your essay run over the recommended number of pages than to try to compress it into fewer pages.

Likewise, large type, large margins, large indentations, triple-spacing, increased leading (space between lines), increased kerning (space between letters), and any other such attempts at “padding” to increase the length of a paper are unacceptable, wasteful of trees, and will not fool your professor.

The paper must be neatly formatted, double-spaced with a one-inch margin on the top, bottom, and sides of each page. When submitting hard copy, be sure to use white paper and print out using dark ink. If it is hard to read your essay, it will also be hard to follow your argument.