According to the DOL, household reports of such items as retirement account contributions and investment allocations will be combined with survey responses on planning methods and strategies and on financial advice received to perform a cross-sectional analysis that is conditional on other respondent attributes.

Multiple sources of data from various surveys, it said, will be used to analyze how retirement planning strategies, decisions and outcomes evolve over time.

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

Despite people’s intentions to the contrary, a Boston College study from its Center for Retirement Research found that they’re often compelled to retire before they’d originally intended, with health a motivator in many cases.

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

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