Elisabeth Nørgaard: AFI Director hunting for impactful research

We are in the middle of a debate about how labour market research has changed over the years and what it will look like in the future. A natural theme as AFI turns 60.

Anniversaries represent a good time to reflect on what has happened in the past, but they can also act as a mirror of the times. After 60 years, you also have a sense of how far that period stretches into the future.

Those of us who were born in the 1950s feel WWII was something that happened a very long time ago. When I was ten, it was 20 years since the war, twice as long as I had been living. 

AFI’s first leader, Einar Thorsrud, was 17 when Norway was invaded in 1940 and he was deeply affected by the war. A teacher in Lillehammer recruited him into the resistance movement.

AFI celebrated its 60th anniversary on 7 November with a half-day conference at Sentralen in Oslo.

A few days after our interview, Elisabeth Nørgaard welcomed people to the 60-year celebrations at Sentralen in Oslo and started by talking about AFI’s first year.

“Thorsrud has said that working in the resistance during the war gave him experience with how much small, independent groups can achieve when fighting for a common goal. That gives you an idea of how it is to be the head of AFI!" 

When AFI was founded in 1964, it had three employees and was called Arbeidspsykologisk institutt (Institute for Work Psychology). Thorsrud has been described as a charismatic person by those who worked with him.

He became central to the so-called collaboration efforts in the 60s. Norway’s two main labour market organisations – LO and NHO (known as NAF at the time) worked together to see if democratising the labour market could help reduce alienation, increase engagement and thereby boost productivity.

The researchers at Arbeidspsykologisk institutt developed what came to be known as action research. The term was used to indicate a research approach that not only gathered knowledge but also engaged actively with the research process itself.

“Action research became very important and had a lot of impact, as it’s often called. Another important example of impact is the contribution of Bjørn Gustavsen, who led the institute between 1962 and 1983.

"He maintained links to AFI until he died in 2018. Gustavsen played an important role in bringing in the Working Environment Act of 1977," Elisabeth Nørgaard reminded the attendees at the 60-year anniversary event. 

“The action research still exists but we don’t necessarily use that name. Anyone working with youth engagement or other engagement processes is using a variant of action research,” says Elisabeth Nørgaard.

But back to our conversation a few days earlier. We understand that “impact” is a bit of a favourite word for Elisabeth Nørgaard. When used in a research context, it points to results that really have influenced social structures, got media attention and become part of public debate.

But why is it not always the freshest data that has the most impact? 

“The fact is that one result from one single survey does not always tell us that much. If a high percentage of young people say they fear entering working life, it doesn’t mean much if we don’t know what young people have said earlier.”

That is why long-term studies are important and AFI has published several of them. The most well-known is the Working Life Barometer which each year poses the same questions.

“The latest Working Life Barometer showed big changes among young people. They worry about their own health and working life, and they are uneasy about the future. It is very important to find out whether this is just a dip and whether things turn and they become optimistic and young again. And carefree? Or has something changed? If this is a lasting change, it is worrisome,” says Elisabeth Nørgaard. 

One of the first examples of AFI’s current research presented at the anniversary conference came from Mari Amdahl Heglum who talked about her study. Has it become harder for young adults to establish themselves in working life? She has studied the cohorts born between 1971 and 1987. 

“We have not seen an increase in the number of those who are socially excluded. A minority are excluded long-term. A debate built on the wrong premises leads to the wrong solutions,” she concluded.

That is why research must also focus on the longer term and make sure answers in big surveys are kept so that it is possible to see how things develop. 

“But you must of course also bring in new issues and have rotating themes, this is important too,” says Elisabeth Nørgaard.

Her own background is at Statistics Norway, where she worked for 25 years. She has always been interested in statistics.

“I have developed statistics on the international balance of payments and national accounts and hospitals, municipalities, GPs, for Longyearbyen in Svalbard and all kinds of groups. I have always promoted the importance of statistics and believe it is still important. 

“It’s basically important for democracy. I believe Statistics Norway has an important social mission.” 

A lot has happened to the technology used to create statistics. Swedish Facit was once a world leader in mechanical calculators, but that was before digitalisation. An old calculator still has pride of place on a bookshelf in Elisabeth Nørgaard’s office. 

What made you apply for the job as Director of AFI?

“After having had many jobs and positions at Statistics Norway, I was simply ready for something new. I had turned 50 and then this opportunity arose. I remember really well the first interview I attended and I thought: This is a job I want. This sounds exciting. It just felt right. 

“So when Kåre Hagen (Head of Research Centre at the Centre for Welfare and Labour Research at OsloMet) rang and offered me the job, I was really happy. I guess something clicked between me and AFI. 

When you came to AFI, was it like you had imagined or totally different?

“It was both what I had imagined and some things that were completely different. It felt like I had been there for only a very brief period when the pandemic hit. It had a big impact on the things I was to work with. All the things that had to be prioritised, all the crisis management and planning and working from home. Alt that took an enormous amount of time.”

But the pandemic also meant new research areas, and for one AFI researcher – Social Geographer Svenn-Erik Mamelund – it became a transformative time. He had spent 20 years studying the Spanish flu. Now, a similar pandemic had arrived, and Mamelund quickly became AFI’s most interviewed researcher. 

How did he manage to get funding for his research?

“It was to be very topical, of course, but nobody could have known that. Yet a pandemic was considered a threat to society even before the Covid-19 pandemic. It was talked about as one of the things that would hit society,” says Elisabeth Nørgaard. 

Other things that followed in the wake of the pandemic were the rapid digitalisation of meetings on various platforms and how working from home functions. During the anniversary conference, Elisabeth sportily appeared in a video where she showed off her own home office – a small desk in the guest room.

“When one of the children come to stay over, I have no home office,” she said.

But the opportunity to work from home also makes it possible to take the dog for an extra walk. Siri Yde Aksnes and Cathrine Egeland follow up the video featuring Elisabeth by presenting figures and responses from their studies. As always, there are several sides to the story – some love working from home because of the independence it brings, others hate it.

AFI began researching work-life balance early on, and it is as topical as ever. 88 per cent of people in knowledge-based occupations believe checking work emails “is not real working”. Online 24/7 – is it time to log off? asked Wendy Nilsen during a presentation at the anniversary conference. 

Another AFI study shows – surprisingly – that 12-hour shifts in the health service have many advantages. 

“Long shifts mean employees can move tasks around without it affecting other employees. They can for instance wash a patient when they are more cooperative, and there is no disruption during shift changes. 

“People with dementia often become uneasy when this happens, and it can take up to two hours before they calm down. Some figures show that the intake of Valium falls by 95 per cent on some wards when long shifts are introduced,” said Vilde Hoff Bernstrøm and Andreas Lillebråten.

But how much is working life really changing? As we go outside with photographer Ilja Hendel to take pictures at the OsloMet campus, it is obvious that taking many pictures no longer represents a cost.

When I was a journalist intern and worked with photographers, they told me that they used to only take two, three exposures per job in order to save on film. When they were back in the dark room, they would pull out the film and only develop those images while leaving the rest of the role of the film in the camera.

“My father always used to say “five kroner” when he took a photo of the family when we were children and went on camping holidays,” says Elisabeth Nørgaard, pretending with her hands to take a photo.

Ilja adds – as part of the debate about how job and private life is becoming intertwined – that he tries to limit himself when on holiday.

“I have this rule that I only take two pictures of each motif then,” he says.  

Our small talk continues when walking around to find a good location for the photo shoot at the OsloMet campus is not only about the fact that language changes. 

The photographer asks Elisabeth to sit on a round, yellow bench. Yellow is OsloMet’s colour, the same hue used on New York taxis. The university markets itself as “the metropolitan university”. Perhaps there is a link there?

We point out that there is no sign outside in Stensberggata 26. But there is a large yellow OsloMet logo.

How is AFI’s relationship to OsloMet really?

Elisabeth Nørgaard told the anniversary conference that it has not always been a bed of roses for AFI.

“After nearly 25 years as partners, in 1987, Arbeidspsykologisk institutt was divided in two – a divorce that resulted in us changing names to the Work Research Institue and the other part became what is today the National Institute of Occupational Health in Norway, STAMI.

“AFI has been evaluated several times and in 1992 one evaluation was particularly rough. It strongly criticised action research for lacking documentation and publication. AFI’s method of developing projects together with those the projects concerned was also criticised. 

“Tough times followed, with reduced base funding and a need for restructuring in the form of a more market-oriented approach. Acquisition, project follow-up, quality assurance, publishing and recruitment – these were important then and are still important now. 

“And then we fast-forward to 2005, when Arild Steen becomes Director of AFI and there were again demanding times.”

Arild Steen was invited to AFI’s 60-year anniversary conference. He was the director between 2005 and April 2018, when Elisabeth Nørgaard took over.

It became clear that AFI needed a bigger family. The projects that were announced grew bigger and the demands for academic standards were increasingly strict. In 2014, AFI moved into the precursor of OsloMet – the Oslo and Akershus University College – together with the NOVA research institute.  

“Moving into a collective at age 50 was cool and clever. Then the gang was extended with NIBR (the Norwegian Institute for Urban and Regional Research) and SIFO (Consumption Research Norway) in 2016.

"Like most cohabiting couples we argue; we discuss order, money, where we want to go – but mostly, and primarily, it is incredibly great to be part of what has become Norway’s biggest social science research environment. And not least what is now Norway’s third largest university, OsloMet,” says Elisabeth Nørgaard.

A few days earlier she had told me about the journey AFI has been on – from being an institute where contract funding was a foreign concept to today where all research is externally funded. 

“All partnerships have challenges, but AFI has been used to working through networks and collaborations, used to getting commissions, used to being flexible. I absolutely believe it has been positive for AFI to be part of a university. And I think it is positive for the university to house a group of contract researchers. Not just from AFI, but all four institutes.”

At the anniversary conference, she ended like this: 

"The institute and the research have developed theoretically, methodologically, and practically over these years. Our research must be relevant, of high academic quality, and contribute to practice and policy-making. 

“And we achieve that. Having a clear goal and developing projects together with those it concerns has become modern again, so it comes in waves.” 

Hopefully, there will be more research projects with real impact in the next 60 years as well.