This document is a step-by-step guide for Managing Authorities and other evaluators of ESF interventions to help them build capacity on the use of administrative data for counterfactual impact evaluations.
The European Commission (Directorate-General for Employment Social Affairs and Inclusion) has just released a guide on “How to use administrative data for European Social Fund (ESF) counterfactual impact evaluations”.
This document is a step-by-step guide for Managing Authorities and other evaluators of ESF interventions to help them build capacity on the use of administrative data for counterfactual impact evaluations.
The guidance note builds upon the fact that administrative data are systematically collected by governments or other organisations for administrative purposes and that, due to their accuracy and low cost, administrative data can be very useful for evaluations. T
In this context, the guide first elaborates on the advantages and challenges of using administrative data. It then focuses on the different steps of using these data for evaluation, starting from identifying the key characteristics of the intervention to be evaluated, and ending with delivery of the data to the evaluator.
Background
It complements the earlier publications “Design and Commissioning of the Counterfactual Impact Evaluations” and “Advanced counterfactual evaluation methods – Guidance document”. These guidance documents introduced the counterfactual impact evaluations and their methods at basic and advanced levels.
Further information
