Labour Market Intervention Logics in Swedish Activation Programmes - A Dictionary-Based Computational Classification
(2026) SIMZ51 20261Master of Science in Social Scientific Data Analysis
- Abstract
- Although there is continuous investment in active labour market policies, the fundamental principles behind publicly funded activation programmes remain poorly mapped. This thesis addresses the gap by developing and applying a theory-driven, dictionary-based computational classification instrument to the full corpus of final project reports from the European Social Fund Programme Area 2 in Sweden, comprising 484 projects and approximately 10,000 pages of documentation. Drawing on established typologies in the active labour market policy literature and the sociology of classification, the study constructs a theoretically grounded typology of intervention logics and classifies each project according to the dominant causal mechanism expressed... (More)
- Although there is continuous investment in active labour market policies, the fundamental principles behind publicly funded activation programmes remain poorly mapped. This thesis addresses the gap by developing and applying a theory-driven, dictionary-based computational classification instrument to the full corpus of final project reports from the European Social Fund Programme Area 2 in Sweden, comprising 484 projects and approximately 10,000 pages of documentation. Drawing on established typologies in the active labour market policy literature and the sociology of classification, the study constructs a theoretically grounded typology of intervention logics and classifies each project according to the dominant causal mechanism expressed in its documentation. The results reveal a portfolio characterised by a structured concentration around Work-First and Human Capital logics, with Social Capital occupying the most marginal position and Motivational Activation at a more modest level than its theoretical grounding would predict. The study argues that this distribution reflects institutional selection pressures embedded in the European Social Fund’s governance architecture, with the funding system’s output-focused accountability infrastructure consistently privileging logics whose causal mechanisms can be translated into administratively legible and quantifiable outputs. Validated against a manual adjudication standard with an effective primary accuracy of 93.3 per cent, the classification instrument demonstrates that theory-driven, dictionary-based approaches can reliably distinguish between distinct intervention logics in a large Swedish-language policy corpus, providing a replicable template for systematic mapping of programme content in contexts where manual analysis is infeasible. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
https://lup.lub.lu.se/student-papers/record/9239114
- author
- MacRae, Louise LU
- supervisor
- organization
- course
- SIMZ51 20261
- year
- 2026
- type
- H2 - Master's Degree (Two Years)
- subject
- keywords
- Active labour market policy, Intervention logic, Dictionary-based classification, European Social Fund, Computational text analysis, Governance
- language
- English
- id
- 9239114
- date added to LUP
- 2026-06-25 10:32:55
- date last changed
- 2026-06-25 10:32:55
@misc{9239114,
abstract = {{Although there is continuous investment in active labour market policies, the fundamental principles behind publicly funded activation programmes remain poorly mapped. This thesis addresses the gap by developing and applying a theory-driven, dictionary-based computational classification instrument to the full corpus of final project reports from the European Social Fund Programme Area 2 in Sweden, comprising 484 projects and approximately 10,000 pages of documentation. Drawing on established typologies in the active labour market policy literature and the sociology of classification, the study constructs a theoretically grounded typology of intervention logics and classifies each project according to the dominant causal mechanism expressed in its documentation. The results reveal a portfolio characterised by a structured concentration around Work-First and Human Capital logics, with Social Capital occupying the most marginal position and Motivational Activation at a more modest level than its theoretical grounding would predict. The study argues that this distribution reflects institutional selection pressures embedded in the European Social Fund’s governance architecture, with the funding system’s output-focused accountability infrastructure consistently privileging logics whose causal mechanisms can be translated into administratively legible and quantifiable outputs. Validated against a manual adjudication standard with an effective primary accuracy of 93.3 per cent, the classification instrument demonstrates that theory-driven, dictionary-based approaches can reliably distinguish between distinct intervention logics in a large Swedish-language policy corpus, providing a replicable template for systematic mapping of programme content in contexts where manual analysis is infeasible.}},
author = {{MacRae, Louise}},
language = {{eng}},
note = {{Student Paper}},
title = {{Labour Market Intervention Logics in Swedish Activation Programmes - A Dictionary-Based Computational Classification}},
year = {{2026}},
}