Possibilities and limits of the gain in knowledge as a result of evaluating active labour market policy

Abstract

"Taking as an example the vocational training of unemployed people, problems of evaluation are discussed. The main problems are that there is still insufficient insight into the dynamics and the action mechanisms of the processes on the labour market and of the possibilities of intervention using labour market policy. The knowledge required on this subject can not be obtained at short notice and can not be extracted from the existing data either. The thesis is that evaluations and evaluation research will not improve this situation. This is mainly because the debate is dominated by economics and is basically conducted under econometric and statistics-related aspects. It always starts only when the preceding problems should already have been solved. Although this is demonstrably not the case, no attention is paid to it. The consequence must be to increase the 'empirical research' in this field again after the fascination resulting from the existing data led to this necessity being largely missed or ignored for more than two decades. The empirical research will have to focus mainly on two subjects: on the requirements of practical further vocational training and on the conditions that lead to the creation of additional employment which could then become the basis of the expected integration success. In spite of all the criticism of the possibilities and promises associated with the analyses of 'available data' that are discussed, this paper advocates enabling also external researchers to gain access to the data, supporting them in their analyses and thus intensifying these evaluations. In this respect both co-operation with the IAB and any support from the IAB and the Federal Employment Services would be possible. Only if the announced analyses are realised as rapidly as possible will it be possible to prove whether the promises can be kept or whether the authors are right in their assumption that they can not provide practitioners and policy-makers with any information about possibilities of action. Then they would also be unable to show policy-makers any really well-founded points of departure regarding intervention. In agreement with the editors of this journal we hope that this paper can contribute to the examination of other views, arguments, suggestions and criticism previously expressed, and can as a result get the long overdue interdisciplinary research under way." (Author's abstract, IAB-Doku) ((en))

Cite article

Blaschke, D. & Plath, H. (2000): Möglichkeiten und Grenzen des Erkenntnisgewinns durch Evaluation aktiver Arbeitsmarktpolitik. In: Mitteilungen aus der Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung, Vol. 33, No. 3, p. 462-482.