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IFAU evaluations will constitute the decision data and be a good source of knowledge for decision makers, white-collar workers and other individuals interested in society. In an evaluation of how, for example, participation in a labour market policy programme affects an individual’s possibilities to obtain work, we must in some way answer the question of what the situation would have been like if the individual had not participated. Finding a comparison group that represents this puts large requirements on the methods used in order to carry out the evaluations.

Our work in this area partly concerns developing statistical methods for analysing information that has already been collected and partly carrying out tests and implementing measures in a way that makes evaluations possible. An area where we have been particularly active as concerns statistical methods is so-called survival analysis where we study what governs for how long a period an individual is unemployed or absent due to illness for example. In close cooperation with other agents, we also work on collecting data and carrying out various kinds of tests in order to be able to study what are the effects of different types of reforms and measures in as certain a way as possible.