Westminster Applied Evaluation Workshop

A series of seminars organised by Policy Studies Institute and
the Centre for Employment Research

Introduction

The evaluation of public programmes, such as welfare-to-work, has greatly improved in recent times through the development of new research methods.

The University of Westminster actively engages in applied programme evaluation through two research centres, the Policy Studies Institute (PSI) and the Centre for Employment Research (CER). These methodological improvements have helped us understand better how programmes like assisted job search can change participants' labour-market outcomes, what can be expected from policies that aim to improve individual occupational mobility and whether programmes provide value for money.

The key driver of this innovation has been the development of new econometric methods and the deployment of random assignment. This workshop series aims to increase participants' understanding of recent methodological developments and how they can be applied.

The use of random assignment and econometric innovations when using observational data has improved applied research on public programmes. Other methodological improvements, which have considerable promise, have yet to be applied to programme evaluations and these will be discussed.

This workshop series consists of nine sessions between November 2009 and June 2010. It features researchers from Britain, Europe and the USA.

The format of the sessions is designed to encourage discussion between academics and practitioners. The series will help policy makers and researchers to strengthen this important area of applied evaluation research.