Qualitative research stresses the social context of welfare reform, but this complexity has been ignored by policy makers.

Welfare reform and the implementation of Universal Credit has been met with a high degree of scepticism, not least because previous research highlights the many flaws in the system. Fran Bennett looks at why, in this case, it has been hard to influence policy makers in terms of shaping the government’s proposals. While the usual pitfalls of pre-conceived government objectives and assumptions are clearly at work, there may also be the problem of qualitative findings in general not carrying much weight.