Exploring social impact assessment implementation process with an approach based on grounded theory

Social impact assessment (SIA) is one of the new and interdisciplinary fields in urban sociology and important strategic tools for achieving quality of life and sustainable development. This study purpose was identifying the quality of the social impact assessment process in Iran, especially urban projects, investigating the problems and challenges faced by the researchers in its implementation and identifying the intervening and strategic factors as well as the consequences of implementing this process. The qualitative research approach and the grounded theory method were used to achieve this goal. The participants in this study were 22 people of SIA professionals and administrators, experts and observers interviewed by a semi-structured questionnaire. Data analysis was performed based on three coding methods used in grounded theory including open coding, axial coding and selective coding. The results of the interviews analysis indicate 22 general categories shown in the paradigmatic model including causal conditions (technocratic look, social participation weakness, social trust weakness, finance affairs and payment), phenomenon orientation (SIA implementation),and intervening conditions (urban governance weakness, social researches institutionalized problems), the field (intermediary institutions weakness, SIA supervision, interdisciplinary thinking), strategies (executors competency, extension of SIA scope, obligatory laws) and consequences(positive: developing the scientific field of assessment, increasing community demands, promoting the sociologist's job position; negative: SIA governing, SIA reduction to conventional research, non-using the pragmatics ; long term: active citizen, quality of life and sustainable development).The results of this research can be considered to improve social impact assessment implementation process and to eliminate its shortcomings