Theoretical Content Classification Guidelines

This document provides guidelines for classifying and uploading content (documents, news, events and programmes) to socialprotection.org. It aims to provide a theoretical background to classify the content according to the platform’s taxonomy. This guide is addressed to people that will classify and upload content to socialprotection.org.

Key Insights

The Socialprotection.org Filters

In socialprotection.org, content (Publications, News, Events etc.) is classified in these main categories: Social Protection Programmes; Social Protection Topics; Cross-Cutting Areas; Geographic Area (Country and Region); Population Group; Authorship; Document Type; and Content Type.

Social Protection Programmes

The main programme categories are: Social Assistance; Social Insurance; Labour Market Programmes/ Public Work/ Productive Inclusion; and Microfinance.

Social Assistance

By ‘Social Assistance’ the guide refers to non-contributory programmes. To avoid an excessively detailed and lengthy classification, and address different interests, the guide has selected a few general categories: Social Transfers, Subsidies, and Social Support Services.

• Social transfers: (Consisting in a transfer in cash or in kind to households in need)
  • Cash transfers: (Money distributed to individuals and households) (In this category are implicitly included: Non-contributory funeral grants; Non-contributory unemployment benefits; Non-contributory disability benefits; Non-contributory old age pensions)
    • Conditional cash transfers: (Cash distributed to individuals or households on the condition that these undertake specified activities, e.g. that children attend school or that mothers attend primary health centres)
    • Unconditional cash transfers: (Cash transferred to individuals and/or households without any conditions or requirements)
  • In kind transfers: (Non-cash transfers, e.g. wheat, flour, food)
    • Conditional in-kind transfers: (In kind goods distributed to individuals or households on the condition that these undertake specified activities, e.g. that children attend school or that mothers attend primary health centres)
    • Unconditional in-kind transfers: (In kind goods transferred to individuals and/or households without any conditions or requirements)
  • School feeding programmes: (Programmes that provide meals to school age children to contribute to poverty reduction and food security)
• Subsidies: (Government or private sector subsidies are sometimes classified as social protection if they enhance access for the poor or act as safety nets. Subsidies can keep prices low for basic goods and services consumed by the poor)
  • Food Subsidies
  • Fuel and electricity subsidies
  • Housing subsidies
  • Non-contributory health insurance
  • Transport subsidies
• Social Support Services: In this category are included: social care services (e.g. psychosocial care services or counselling) for children, elderly, women, disabled, immigrants etc.

Social Insurance

By ‘Social Insurance’ the guide refers to contributory programmes. “Social insurance schemes are contributory programmes in which beneficiaries make regular financial contributions in order to join a scheme that will reduce risk in the event of a shock“11. The guide notes that schemes could be targeted at several kinds of events or changes in the lives of individuals, such as: Disability; Death; Illness; Maternity/Paternity; Old-age; Unemployment; Work-Related Injury (respectively reported on the following table).

Labour Market Programmes/Public Works/Productive Inclusion

This category encompasses three different sub-categories of programmes related to the labour market that can overlap among themselves. The guide outlines the following subcategories:

• Training (programmes aimed at developing labour skills)
• Unemployment benefits (contributory and/or non-contributory cash transfers targeting unemployed people)
• Wage subsidies (“payment to worker or firm based on wages earned or paid”; in developing countries they are mostly addressed to workers and introduced in response to economic crisis or spike in unemployment”)

The guide notes that Unemployment benefits and Unemployment Insurance are included in both Social Insurance and Labour Market Programmes, and implicitly also in Social Assistance. How to classify them?

• When Unemployment Benefits are non-contributory, they should be classified as ‘Social Assistance’ under the category ‘Cash Transfers’ and also as Labour Market Programmes under the category ‘Unemployment Benefits’.
• When Unemployment Benefits are contributory, they should be classified as ‘Social Insurance’ under the category ‘Unemployment Insurance’ and as ‘Labour Market Programme’ under the category ‘Unemployment Benefits’.

“Public work” refers mostly to Cash or Food for work. This type of intervention is targeted at working-age household members who are able to provide labour in exchange for cash or food. Oftentimes the work consists of public infrastructure or other kinds of jobs that benefit the whole community.

• Cash for work (Cash transfers distributed to vulnerable individuals or households in exchange for labour)
• Food for work (Food distributed to individuals or households in exchange for labour)

The guide defines ‘Productive inclusion’ as “consists in promoting activities aimed to create jobs and enable poor families to have a source of income. Urban and rural areas require specific approaches and policies due to the nature of their economic activities”.

• Sustainable livelihood programmes (programmes that “offers both a conceptual and a programming framework for poverty reduction in a sustainable manner”)
• Purchases from smallholder farmers (They “aim to support smallholder farmers in one of the most difficult aspects of the productive process: gaining market access for the produce they grow”. These programmes “allow farmers to sell their produce to local public institutions such as hospitals, community canteens, food banks, orphanages and charities, without the need for a public bidding process.”)

Microfinance

The guide states that some authors define this category as social protection, while others do not agree. They have decided to include it due to their inclusive approach, stating that “Microfinance offers a mechanism, by which, organizations such as banks, non-governmental organizations (NGO), non-bank financial institutions and governments offer financial services (loans, saving, money transfer services and microinsurance) to the poor”. In the guide’s classification, they refer mostly to microfinance programmes supported or implemented by the government, to offer financial services to specific groups of people for specific or general purposes.

Social Protection Topics

The guide lists the main social protection topics, as well as their definitions in parentheses:

• Benefits level (Content about the adequacy of the amount of benefits delivered to beneficiaries)
• Benefits payment/delivery (Content about the methods through which benefits are transferred to the targeted groups)
• Conditionalities (Content about conditionalities for beneficiaries of SP programmes. “In the context of social welfare, the term conditionality refers to (…) households or individuals who receive government transfers conditional on some form of behavioral compliance.”)
• Coverage (Content about the coverage of SP programmes in terms of number of beneficiaries and geographic areas)
• Feedback and Complaints mechanisms (Content about the mechanisms that beneficiaries and/or potential beneficiaries can use to inform social workers about complaints, grievances and feedback regarding social protection programmes)
• Financing Social Protection (Content about the financial funding and sustainability of SP programmes as well as documents regarding the level of SP expenditure)
• Governance (Content about strategic and macro policy issues and management, organisational arrangements and administrative operations of social protection policies and programmes)
• Informal Social protection (Content about informal social protection. “Informal social protection encompasses those arrangements and actions taken by an individual or groups of individuals that are not guided by formal legal regulations but are not necessarily contravening these laws and regulations.”)
• Labour regulation (Content about labour regulation in general: legislations, workers’ rights, labour policies, etc.)
• Legislation (Content about preparation and enactment of laws by a legislative body through its lawmaking process)
• Monitoring and evaluation (Content about mechanisms and strategies to monitor and evaluate social protection programmes)
• Political economy (Content about linkages between politics and economics, drawing on theories of economics, law as well as political and social sciences)
• Programme Graduation (Content about the graduation of beneficiaries from SP programmes)
• Programme design and implementation (Content about the design and implementation of social protection programmes)
• Single Registry/Unified Database/MIS (Content about single registries. A Single Registry “is a registry-organized into a database-of all people and households registered-interviewed if using a census for data collection or application submission with an on demand approach.”)
• Social Protection definition and features (Content that provides an overview about: what is SP, what are the main components of SP, the history of SP; the different approaches to SP; etc.)
• Social Protection Floor (SPF) (Content explicitly about the concept of Social Protection Floor (SPF) elaborated by the ILO. The SPF “is an approach that promotes an integrated set of social policies designed to guarantee income security and access to essential social services for all, paying particular attention to vulnerable groups and protecting and empowering people across the life cycle”.)
• Social protection systems (Content that refers to systemic approach to social protection, meaning the provision of coordinated/integrated interventions)
• Targeting (Content about targeting strategies for selecting beneficiaries of SP programmes)
• Universal Social Protection (Content about the integrated set of policies designed to ensure income security and support to all- paying particular attention to the poor and the vulnerable.)

Cross-Cutting Areas

The guide states that the idea of this category is to offer the user the possibility of searching according to main social/policy areas. In general, the guide mentions that they are not classifying documents about poverty or education but they are classifying content about social protection and the cross-cutting areas.

• Agriculture and rural development
• Consumption and expenditure
• Disability
• Disasters and crises
  • Humanitarian crisis
• Education
• Environment and climate change
• Financial education and inclusion
• Food and nutritional security
• Gender
• Growth
• Health
  • General
• Housing and infrastructure
• Human capital
• Human rights
• Income-generating activities and asset accumulation (we refer to choices at the households and individual levels)
• Inequality (Content about SP and social/economic inequality)
• Labour market
  • General
  • Child labour
  • Informality
  • Labour allocation decisions
  • Migration/Remittances
  • Unemployment
• MDGs/SDGs
• Natural resources
• Poverty
• Resilience
• Risk and Vulnerability
• Social Inclusion
• Water, sanitation and hygiene
• Child health
• HIV/AIDS
• Maternal Health

Geographic Coverage

The guide mentions that content can be classified according to the geographic areas they pertain to by country and/or by developing regions.

• Country
  • Global
  • Africa
  • America
  • Antarctica
  • Asia
  • Europe
  • Oceania
• Region
  • Global
  • East Asia & Pacific
  • Europe & Central Asia
  • Latin America & Caribbean
  • North America
  • Middle East & North Africa
  • South-Asia
  • Sub-Saharan Africa

Authorship

The authors of the documents are classified according to 5 categories: Government, International Organisation, Non-Governmental Organisation, Research Centre and Academia, Consulting firm and Other.

• Government
• International Organisation (Bilateral, multilateral, and regional organisations including development banks and funds)
• Non-Governmental Organisation (non-profit and sometimes international organizations independent of governments)
• Research Centres and Academia (establishment founded for doing specialized research)
• Consulting firm (experts that provides advice professionally)
• Individual Authors (Select this category in conjunction with the others and type the authors names)
• Others (It includes Contents produced by organizations that do not follow under the previous categories)

Population Group

The guide states that this category concerns the population groups analysed by the document. They provide the definition for some categories, in black and in parentheses, while others do not need further definition and they suggest following the same terminology used in the content that is being classified.

• Children
• Elderly
• Ethnic groups (we refer to ethnic minorities)
• People living with HIV/AIDS
• Persons with disabilities
• Refugees
• Women
  • Mothers (including pregnant women)
• Working-age group
• Youth

Document type

The document types included in the Publication tool are listed as:

• Audio
• Database
• Infographic
• Online Tools (Interactive tools, such a toolbox, a toolkit, a map, a calculator. They can be also online package/courses composed of texts, videos, slides)
• Photos
• Slides
• Text

Content type

The guide provides some guidelines for defining each ‘Content type’, mentioning that One document could comprise more than one ‘Content type’ and then be classified under more than one category.

• Assessment Tools (Documents about instruments able to assess the state of a social protection systems (or their components) in a given country over a period of time. Examples: Social Protection Index
• Case Studies (Documents about one or more countries’ experiences or reviews of case studies)
• General Monitoring and Evaluation (Documents that evaluate SP programmes, policies and systems)
• General Review and Background Information (Documents that offer basic information about one subject or a general overview on that subject)
• Impact Evaluation (Documents about the impact of policies and programmes on social/policy areas or indicators.
• Learning Tools (Guides, manuals, toolkits and learning materials addressed to policy makers, project managers and researchers. Learning tools are documents that explain how to design, implement and evaluate social protection)
• Legal Instrument (a document that states contractual relationships or grants some right)
• Policy document (it provides details of the government’s policy commitments, it is an implementation plan)

Sources of information

The guide summarizes mandatory sources of information for each document type in socialprotection.org platform:

• AUDIO: Mandatory sources of information are: Title and Tags (if any).
• DATABASE: Mandatory sources of information are: Title and Tags (if any).
• INFOGRAPHIC: Mandatory sources of information are: Title and Tags (if any).
• ONLINE TOOLS: Mandatory sources of information are: Title and Tags (if any).
• PHOTOS: Mandatory sources of information are: Title and Tags (if any).
• SLIDES: Mandatory sources of information are: Title and Slides titles.
• TEXT: Mandatory sources of information are: Title, Table of Contents and Keywords. If the classifier cannot find all the necessary information, they should also read through the Abstract, Introduction, Executive Summary or Chapter titles.
• VIDEO: Mandatory sources of information are: Title and Tags (if any).

Implications and Conclusions

This document provides a comprehensive framework for understanding and applying the content classification guidelines used by socialprotection.org. By outlining the key categories, topics, and criteria for classifying content, this guide promotes consistency and accuracy in the organization and retrieval of information related to social protection policies and programmes. The effective use of these guidelines is essential for enhancing the accessibility and usability of the socialprotection.org platform, facilitating knowledge sharing and collaboration among practitioners, researchers, and policymakers in the field of social protection.