The Department of Labor is going to lookat something that hasn’t been studied all that much before: howpeople make planning and financial decisions before and duringretirement.

The goal of the long-term research study is to figure out howretirement planning strategies anddecisions evolve over time.

The “On the Road to Retirement” surveys are intended to trackU.S. households over several years to gain insight into people’sdecisionmaking processes and experiences.

Research questions will cover retirement savings, investment anddrawdown behavior.

According to the DOL, household reports of such items asretirement account contributions and investment allocations will becombined with survey responses on planning methods and strategiesand on financial advice received to perform a cross-sectionalanalysis that is conditional on other respondent attributes.

Multiple sources of data from various surveys, it said, will beused to analyze how retirement planning strategies, decisions andoutcomes evolve over time.

Such data could prove extremely helpful in figuring out ways tocope with the retirement crisis and uncover reasons why so manypeople fail to save enough for retirement—or fail to follow plansthey made that msight have been better designed to prepare them fora long period of retirement.

Despite people’s intentions to the contrary, a Boston Collegestudy from its Center for Retirement Research found that they’reoften compelled to retire before they’doriginally intended, with health a motivator in many cases.

In addition, another survey from Fidelity Investments and theStanford Center on Longevity found that emotional factors can play a largerole in people’s decisions about when to leave the workplace.

And yet another research paper from the Pension Research Councilat the Wharton School found that regardless of what people say theyplan to do about retirement, their actions are often different—sothey should plan for their plans to be frustrated.