The main areas of L&R Social Research's research activities during the past years have been labour market policy, regional and social policy, education training, labour qualification, labour market development in Eastern European states adjacent to Austria, the connection between women and technology as regards subject matter, the effectiveness of supportive measures for women's issues, as well as scientific support for structural fund interventions in Austria. In these areas the staff of L&R Social Research has already carried out and published a large number of studies. In many cases those corresponded to the evaluation study and served the evaluation of programs, measures or projects, and furthermore basics research and market observation.
A special focus lies on the practical relevance of research work. For this reason also ways of practical action are being considered based on the research results. The target of this connection between analytical and practical aspects is an increased certainty in decision-making based on scientific report.
Research work is carried out by interdisciplinary project teams, supplemented by external experts if necessary. To meet the respective interest of research our staff creates an optimal combination of quantitative and qualitative research methods.
- L&R Social Research offers the following research methods: postal surveys, telephonic and personal interviews, group discussion and participating as well as non-participating observations. Telephonic interviews are carried out and supported by workspaces including telephonic equipment based on modern computer and database technology. Also interviews of a larger scale can be carried out quickly and precisely by a flexible staff and modern equipment.
The methods of data analysis reach from linear counting and cross tabulation to methods of inferential statistics and multivariate statistics. In addition L&R Social Research has developed a special software to analyse individual profile data from the Social Security Association that support the evaluation of measures of active labour market policy.
The analysis of texts and pictures reaches from content analysis according to the "Grounded Theory" model to a sophisticated use of social study hermeneutics and conversation analysis. The basic material for the analysis may be various kinds of text sources as well as transcriptions of single and group discussion, revised video sequences and pictures such as photographies.
- Literary analysis is based on social study inquiries, EU documents, ministry reports and studies of market and opinion research.
Educational and employment measures of European countries are analysed in comparative analysis and considering their social and legal conditions, they are set against the situation in Austria.
- Consistent integration of equal treatment issues is addressed by ensuring that the necessary Gender authority is represented when making up the research team. The balanced gender parity of the research team together with the gender mainstreaming expert ensures, that this cross-sector issue receives appropriate attention throughout all research steps.
- The research team evaluates personal, measure-specific or company data for scientific and statistic purposes only, thereby protecting anonymity. L&R Social Research’s staff are contractually committed to confidentiality and data secrecy (§15 DSG 2000).
