University of Helsinki
Katariina Warpenius is well-known to the alcohol research community, especially for her work on local alcohol policy. In her doctoral dissertation she unfolds local alcohol policy projects and trials as political and epistemic projects which channel certain kinds of governance. “It reflects a Nordic post-centralized governance mode”, explains Warpenius, who is defending her PhD work on Friday.
The dissertation consists both of work produced in the local alcohol policy program PAKKA and a larger critically reflective entity on the methods and principles in local alcohol projects and the challenges and discourses that set the standards for how they are supposed to work.
PAKKA, which was carried out in 2004–2007, was a community-based programme combining law enforcement, responsible beverage service-training (RBS), information and media campaigns and local structures for co-operation in two Finnish areas. The research design was a controlled quasi-experimental pre- and post-intervention study. In the field work, a male actor would pretend to be clearly under the influence of alcohol attempting to purchase a pint of beer from licensed premises in the study areas. Post-intervention data was gathered using the same method. The results were reported in terms of rates of service refusals. In the post-intervention study there was a statistically significant increase in denials to serve the actor in the intervention area (from 23% to 42% of the licensed premises) compared to the control area.
Warpenius discusses the method of quasi-experiments based on test purchases:
– It is a challenge to control for methodical problems such as the validity of the comparative experimental setting, the standardisation of research assistants’ performances and the disclosure of covert field work, summarizes Warpenius.
Some ethical concerns that Warpenius identify relate to the fact that covert research is not declared to the research participants especially if the object of the study is an illegal action (selling alcohol to intoxicated persons).
Warpenius also problematizes estimations and measures of effect.
– Evaluation research has traditionally not been separately and explicitly articulated as such in the Nordics. Political decisions have been followed up but this practice was not referred to as evaluation.
The new focus on local interventions and controlled trial measurements of their effectiveness is by Warpenius explained by the trend of new decentralized and neoliberalist modes of governance.
Katarina Warpenius works as a senior researcher at the National Institute for Health and Welfare (THL). She defends her dissertation in the Main Building of The University of Helsinki in the Auditorium XIV (Unioninkatu 34), Friday 10.5.2019 at 12’o clock.
To the dissertation:
Katariina Warpenius: Paikallinen alkoholipolitiikka moraalihallinnan käytäntönä : Kvasikokeellisen vaikuttavuustutkimuksen metodisia ja eettisiä kysymyksiä . University of Helsinki, Faculty of Social Sciences 112/2019
Olavi Kaukonen will serve as opponent and Ilkka Arminen as custos.
About the dissertation elsewhere:
Väitös: Paikallinen alkoholipolitiikka -toimintamalli vähensi päihtyneille anniskelua ravintoloissa
Paikallinen alkoholipolitiikka toimintamalli vähensi päihtyneille anniskelua ravintoloissa
