European funds for social experimentations

European grants in the field of social experimentation
Deadline:  15/12/2011.

This call offers to applicants the possibility to develop social experimentation projects according to the following protocol/steps:

• Design of the policy intervention: a rigorous description of the logically structured set of actions envisaged as part of the policy reform should be provided. It should ensure that the different incentives, opportunities, or constraints to which the population will be confronted with are identified and described

• Design of the experimentation method: preference will be given to the random assignment method that randomly assigns the potential beneficiaries of the policy/interventions to either a treatment group or a comparison group. Other evaluation method such as the quasi-experimental design (non-randomized assignment) may be considered as long as the impact of the interventions being tested is credibly ascertained. The expected outcomes of the interventions should be stated in clear and measurable terms to serve as yardsticks for determining the extent of the policy intervention's success.

• Lessons for policy design: a rigorous analysis and interpretation of the results should be put in place with a view to arriving at shared conclusions about the up-scaling potential of the tested policies taking into account elements such as the context, in which the policy has to be implemented, the feasibility, the acceptability and the timeliness of the proposed solutions.

Scope

The relevant projects should address issues such as:

• Design, management and methods to evaluate social experimentations.
• Strategies to scale-up social experimentations and to generalise its results into broader policy measures.
• Cooperation and networking activities.

Eligibility of the applicant

The applicant should meet the following eligibility criteria:

1. This call is accessible to stakeholders from all EU countries,+ the EFTA countries, the candidate countries and the pre-candidate countries

2. Applicants must be public authorities, state/semi-state agencies at central, regional or local level of the  participating countries.

3. They should be properly constituted and registered organisations (legal person) established in one of the  participating countries with an established administrative and financial management structure.