Polarized parton densities in the nucleon

We present a critical assessment of what can be learned from the present data on inclusive polarized DIS. We examine critically some of the simplifying assumptions made in recent analyses and study in detail the question of the determination of the gluon, strange sea, and valence quark polarized densities. We have also carried out a new NLO QCD analysis of the world data. We find an excellent fit to the data and present our results for the polarized parton densities.