Forte’s areas, health, working life and welfare, are knowledge and policy areas which are essential to people’s daily lives and key parts of Swedish welfare. Many of society’s challenges are found in these areas. The research that Forte funds must therefore be of high scientific quality, be relevant for society and be useful for making a difference to society and people’s lives.
In order to be able to evaluate to what extent Forte´s research funding meets this three-part mission while also creating a basis for strategic choices in the future, we need to develop and discuss relevant ways to capture what type of research we are funding. In this report, Forte has carried out an analysis of applications in our annual call for project grants from 2022. The analysis has been based on a classification of applications based on the type of research, that is, what applicants want to achieve with the research they are seeking funding for.
The classification was based on three categories:
- descriptive; research mainly aimed at describing conditions and trend
- analytical and mechanistic; research aimed at analysing and explaining correlations and identifying the mechanisms behind them
- problem-solving; research that has a stated ambition to contribute to identifying and evaluating solutions to the social problems being studied.
The analysis forms a basis for strategic discussions and choosing paths going forward, concerning how Forte best can fulfil the tasks regarding societal relevance and impact. The analysis can also be seen as an input into the more general research policy discussion about what types of research are needed and how these can be stimulated.
