Category Archives: IRWS

International Research Workshop

Questionnaire Design

Institution: see Organisers & Acknowledgements

Program of study: International Research Workshop

Lecturer: Prof. Dr. Juergen H. P. Hoffmeyer-Zlotnik (University of Gießen)
Prof. Dr. Dagmar Krebs (University of Gießen)
Dr. Natalja Menold (GESIS)

Date:

01.10.2012, 09:00 – 12:30
02.10.2012, 09:00 – 12:30
04.10.2012, 09:00 – 12:30
05.10.2012, 09:00 – 12:30

Room: n.s.

Max. number of participants: n.s.

Semester periods per week: n.s.

Credit Points: 5 CP for participating in the whole IRWS

Language of instruction: English/German (depending on participants)

Contents:

The lectures deal with the basic principles which have been established in the best practice of questionnaire design. The theoretical background and current state of research will be demonstrated on examples and practical exercises.

1. Cognitive process and cognitive pretests: Monday

For the beginning the cognitive process in survey responding, including comprehension, retrieval, judgement and formatting response will be presented. For each of these phases the demands for questionnaire design related to the questions about attitudes, opinions and behavior will be explicated. It will be shown, how cognitive pretest techniques (think aloud, probing, confidence rating, paraphrasing) can help to detect the problems in questionnaires, which were related to the cognitive burden of the respondents.

2. Context effects and question wording: Tuesday

This section deals with the impact of situational context given in questionnaires on judgements/answers. Regarding the principles of question wording topics such as to phrase the questions, usage of terms and problems with hypothetical, suggestive, negative and double-barreled questions were attended. For each of the principles examples of problems and their solutions will be given.

3. Constructing of optimal answer formats: Thursday

Constructing of optimal answer formats due the reliability and validity of questions includes topics such as number of scale points, midpoint, usage of unipolare and bipolare scales, labels of scale points, ascending and descending sequences. Related topics are handling of open and closed questions and usage of non-opinion filters. The problems and their solutions are demonstrated with help of examples and exercises.

4. Collection of sociodemographic data: Friday

The fourth part of this lesson demonstrate how to harmonise demographic and socio-economic variables in cross-national comparative survey research. Demographic and socio-economic variables describe the context in which a person is acting. In cross-national comparable research standardised instruments or indices exist only for a very small group of variables. Aside from these instruments there are rules for developing further measurement instruments for measuring socio-demographic variables in cross-national research.

Literature

Bortz, J., & Döring, N. (2002). Forschungsmethoden und Evaluation für Human- und Sozialwissenschaftler. Berlin et al.: Springer.

Christian, Leah. M., Parsons, N. L., & Dillman, Don. A. (2009). Designing Scalar Questions for Web Surveys. Sociological Methods and Research, 37(393), 423.

Christian, Leah. M., & Dillman, Don. A. (2004). The Influence of Graphical and Symbolic Language Manipulations on Responses to Self-Administered Questions. Public Opinion Quarterly, 68(1), 57-80.

Christian, L. M., Dillman, D. A., & Smyth, J. D. (2007). Helping Respondents Get it Right the First Time: The Influenece of Words, Symbols, and Graphics in Web Surveys. Public Opinion Quarterly, 71(1), 113-125.

Couper, M. P., Conrad, F. G., & Tourangeau, R. (2007). Visual Context Effects in Web Surveys. Public Opinion Quarterly, 71(4), 623-634.

Dillman, D. A., Smyth, J. D., & Christian, L. M. (2009). Internet, mail, and mixed-mode surveys. The tailored design method. Wiley: New Jersey.

Dillman, D. A. (2007). Mail and Internet Surveys. The Tailored Design Method. Wiley: New Jersey.

Groves, R. M; Fowler, F. J.; Couper, M.P.; Lepkowski, J. M.; Singer, E. & Tourangeau, R. (2004). Survey Methodology. New Jersey: Wiley.

Hippler, Hans-J. (1988). Methodische Aspekte schriftlicher Befragungen: Probleme und Forschungsperspektiven. Planung und Analyse, 6, S. 244-248.

Holbrook, A. L., & Krosnick, J. A. (2010a). Social desirability bias in voter turnout reports: Tests using the item count technique. Public Opinion Quarterly, 74, 37-67.

Holbrook, A. L., & Krosnick, J. A. (2010b). Measuring voter turnout by using the randomized response technique: Evidence calling into question the method’s validity. Public Opinion Quarterly, 74, 328-343.

Krosnick, J. A., & Fabrigar, L. R. (1997). Designing rating scales for effective measurement in surveys. In L. Lyberg, P. Biemer, M. Collins, E. de Leeuw, C. Dippo, N. Schwarz, & D. Trewin, (Eds.), Survey measurement and process quality (pp. 141-164). New York: Wiley.

Krosnick, J. A., & Presser, S. (2010). Questionnaire design. In J. D. Wright & P. V. Marsden (Eds.), Handbook of Survey Research (Second Edition). West Yorkshire, England: Emerald Group.

Krosnick, J. A., Holbrook, A. L., Berent, M. K., Carson, R. T., Hanemann, W. M., Kopp, R. J., Mitchell, R. C., Presser, S., Ruud, P. A., Smith, V. K., Moody, W. R., Green, M. C., & Conaway, M. (2002). The impact of “no opinion” response options on data quality: Non-attitude reduction or an invitation to satisfice? Public Opinion Quarterly, 66, 371-403.

Krosnick, J. A., Judd, C. M. & Wittenbrink, B. (2005). The measurement of attitudes. In D. Albarracin, B. T. Johnson & M. P. Zanna (Hrsg.). The Handbook of Attitudes (S. 21-75). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.

Maitland, A. (2009 a). Should I label all scale points or just the end points for attitudinal questions? Survey Practice, 04. AAPOR e-journal.

Maitland, A. (2009 b). How many scale points should I include for attitudinal questions? Survey Practice, 06. AAPOR e-journal.

Porst, R. (2000). Question Wording – Zur Formulierung von Fragebogen-Fragen. Gesis How-to Reihe, Nr. 22; http://www.gesis.org/fileadmin/upload/forschung/publikationen/gesis_reihen/howto/how-to2rp.pdf.

Porst, R. (2008). Fragebogen. Ein Arbeitsbuch. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften.

Saris, W. E., & Gallhofer, I. N. (2007). Design, evaluation, and analysis of questionnaires for survey research. Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Saris, W., Revilla, M., Krosnick, J. A., & Shaeffer, E. (2010). Comparing questions with agree/disagree response options to questions with item-specific response options. Survey Research Methods, 4, 61-79.

Schuman, H., & Presser, S. (1981). Questions and answers in attitude surveys: Experiments in question form, wording, and context. New York: Academic Press.

Schwarz, N., Strack, F., & Mai, H. P. (1991). Assimilation and contrast effects in part-whole question sequences: A conversational logic analysis. Public Opinion Quarterly, 55, 3-23.

Stadtmüller, S. & Porst, R. Wie man die Rücklaufquote bei postalischen Befragungen erhöht. http://www.gesis.org/fileadmin/upload/forschung/publikationen/gesis_reihen/howto/how-to14rp.pdf

Sudman, S., Bradburn, N. M. & Schwarz, N. (1996). Thinking about answers: The application of cognitive processes to survey methodology. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Tourangeau, R., Rips, L. J. & Rasinski, K. (Druck 2006, Auflage 2000). The psychology of survey response. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

You have to register for the 6th International Research Workshop to participate in this course.

Introduction to MaxQDA for Case Studies

Institution: see Organisers & Acknowledgements

Program of study: International Research Workshop

Lecturer: Heiko Grunenberg (Leuphana University Lüneburg)

Date:

04.10.2012, 14:00 – 17:30

Room: n.s.

Max. number of participants: 20

Semester periods per week: n.s.

Credit Points: 5 CP for participating in the whole IRWS

Language of instruction: English

Contents:

This workshop is directly affiliated to the course “Case Study Research”. We want to see, how the ideas and approaches of “Case Study Research” could be transacted with a software of qualitative research like MAXqda.

It is not necessary to have deep knowledge about MAXqda, but please have a look at http://www.maxqda.com to understand the basic steps of computer assisted qualitative research.

References
Lewins, Ann/ Silver, Christina (2007): Using Software in Qualitative Research: A Step-By-Step Guide. SAGE: London.
Gerring, John (2006): Case Study Research: Principles and Practices. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge.

You have to register for the 6th International Research Workshop to participate in this course.

Qualitative Inquiry and Content Analysis with MAXQDA

Institution: see Organisers & Acknowledgements

Program of study: International Research Workshop

Lecturer: Heiko Grunenberg (Leuphana University Lüneburg)

Date:

04.10.2012, 09:00 – 12:30
05.10.2012, 09:00 – 12:30

Room: n.s.

Max. number of participants: 20

Semester periods per week: n.s.

Credit Points: 5 CP for participating in the whole IRWS

Language of instruction: German

Contents:

MAXqda is a software to analyze textual data in a qualitative (but also quantitative) way. The course provides a basic introduction into the logic of the program and its broad possibilities. The goal is to enable you to use this tool accordingly to your own method of analysis. For this reason, everybody can practice our working-steps at an own Computer. We will start at the very beginning and learn about the basic features of the program such as preparation and import of texts, basic analysis strategies and creation of codes, memos and variables. After this, we will focus on analysis strategies, simple and complex text retrievals. At the end, we will take a short excursion into the quantitative content analysis of counting and numbers.

References
Kuckartz, Udo (2010): Einführung in die computergestützte Analyse qualitativer Daten. VS-Verlag Wiesbaden.
Lewins, Ann/ Silver, Christina (2007): Using Software in Qualitative Research: A Step-By-Step Guide. SAGE: London.

You have to register for the 6th International Research Workshop to participate in this course.

Qualitative (Expert) Interviews

Institution: see Organisers & Acknowledgements

Program of study: International Research Workshop

Lecturer: N.N.

Date:

01.10.2012, 09:00 – 12:30
02.10.2012, 09:00 – 12:30

Room: n.s.

Max. number of participants: 20

Semester periods per week: n.s.

Credit Points: 5 CP for participating in the whole IRWS

Language of instruction: English/German (depending on participants)

Contents:

tba.

You have to register for the 6th International Research Workshop to participate in this course.

Data Analysis with R

Institution: see Organisers & Acknowledgements

Program of study: International Research Workshop

Lecturer: Marco Lehmann (University of Hamburg)

Date:

01.10.2012, 09:00 – 12:30
02.10.2012, 09:00 – 12:30
04.10.2012, 09:00 – 12:30
05.10.2012, 09:00 – 12:30

Room: n.s.

Max. number of participants: 20

Semester periods per week: n.s.

Credit Points: 5 CP for participating in the whole IRWS

Language of instruction: English/German (depending on participants)

Contents:

The course introduces the programming language R used for statistical analyses. The beginning of each lecture comes with a demonstration of programming and statistical functions that will be elaborated in the course of study. The students will then practice with many statistical examples. In addition to statistical functions the course will introduce the definition of R as a programming language and its syntax rules. Students will further learn to use R’s scripting capabilities.

Literatur
Wollschläger, Daniel (2012). Grundlagen der Datenauswertung mit R (2. Aufl.). Berlin: Springer.

You have to register for the 6th International Research Workshop to participate in this course.

Data Analysis with Stata (Beginners)

Institution: see Organisers & Acknowledgements

Program of study: International Research Workshop

Lecturer: Tobias Gramlich (University of Duisburg-Essen)

Date:

01.10.2012, 09:00 – 12:30
02.10.2012, 09:00 – 12:30
04.10.2012, 09:00 – 12:30
05.10.2012, 09:00 – 12:30

Room: n.s.

Max. number of participants: 20

Semester periods per week: n.s.

Credit Points: 5 CP for participating in the whole IRWS

Language of instruction: English/German (depending on participants)

Contents:

Stata is a statistical program package widely used (not only) in the social and economical sciences; it is used for data management, statistical graphics and analysis of quantitative data. Statistical concepts will not be part of the course, so participants should have some very basic knowledge of statistics. The course should enable participants to prepare their data for analysis, perform adequate analysis using a statistical computer program and to document these tasks to keep them reproducible.

For Beginners with No or Very Little Knowledge of the Program!

Course Topics cover:

  • “What You Type is What You Get”: Basic stata Command syntax
  • Getting (and Understanding) Help within stata: stata Bulit-in Help System
  • Basic Data Management: Load and Save stata Datasets, Generate and Manipulate Variables, Describe and Label Data and Variables, Perform Basic uni- and bivariate Analyses, Change the Structure of your Data
  • Basic stata Graphics: Scatterplot, Histogram, Bar Chart
  • Working with “Do-” and “Log-” Files

You have to register for the 6th International Research Workshop to participate in this course.

Case Study Research

Institution: see Organisers & Acknowledgements

Program of study: International Research Workshop

Lecturer: Miriam Wilhelm (Universitet Groningen)

Date:

01.10.2012, 14:00 – 17:30
02.10.2012, 14:00 – 17:30

Room: n.s.

Max. number of participants: 20

Semester periods per week: n.s.

Credit Points: 5 CP for participating in the whole IRWS

Language of instruction: English/German (depending on participants)

Contents:

In this course participants will learn to design, conduct and publish case studies.

After participating in this course students will gain enhanced knowledge on the process of conducting a case study. Students must not possess prior knowledge with actual case study research but they should work on a research question that is in principle suitable for a case study design.

Day 1: Learning about case studies

  • Case study design
  • Case study process
  • Quality criteria for case study research

Day 2: Doing case studies

  • Paper discussion
  • Publishing with case studies

Literature
Eisenhardt, K.N. (1989): Building theories from case study research. Academy of Management Review, 14(4): 532-550.

You have to register for the 6th International Research Workshop to participate in this course.

5th International Research Workshop – “Methods for Ph.D.”

5th International Research Workshop – “Methods for Ph.D.”

October 2-7, 2011
Akademie Sankelmark, Flensburg (Germany)
University of Southern Denmark, Sønderborg (Denmark)

For the fifth time Ph.D. students in the field of Social Sciences and Economics have the opportunity to broaden their knowledge and experience in research on empirical data, including SOEP. The workshop language will be English. Interested parties from all countries are invited. The workshop is especially for those who need training in the process of choosing a topic, grounding the research idea in theory, as well as in gathering and analyzing data and presenting results in scientific contexts.

The workshop tackles these steps of Ph.D. research projects:

  • gathering data through (un)structured interviews and analyzing standardized survey data (e.g., SOEP),
  • using the computer for content analysis and as a statistical tool,
  • writing a report and making presentations.

These steps will strengthen the cooperation in empirical research to boost and streamline ones project. For more information about the programme, see:

https://hermes.hsu-hh.de/doctoralstudy/irws/programme/

It is possible to obtain credits for the workshop under the European Credit Transfer System.

The workshop fee is 390 Euro. This includes all lectures, meals, and accommodations during the workshop (October 2-7, 2011). For more information about the registration procedure, see:

https://hermes.hsu-hh.de/doctoralstudy/irws/registration/

Organizers of the Workshop are: Helmut-Schmidt University – University of the Federal Armed Forces Hamburg, University of Flensburg, the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP) at the DIW Berlin, University of Southern Denmark Campus Soenderborg, Leuphana University Lüneburg, University of Hamburg – Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences and Faculty of Education Psychology and Human Movement.

Workshopfolder as PDF

Case Study Research

Institution: see Organisers & Acknowledgements

Program of study: International Research Workshop

Lecturer: Miriam Wilhelm

Date:

03.10.2011, 14:00 – 17:30
04.10.2011, 14:00 – 17:30

Room: n.s.

Max. number of participants: 25

Semester periods per week: n.s.

Credit Points: 5 CP for participating in the whole IRWS

Language of instruction: English/German (depending on participants)

Contents:

In this course participants will learn to design, conduct and publish case studies. After the course participants:

  • are knowledgeable about which type of research question are most appropriate for a case study approach,
  • will be able to differentiate between different types of case studies,
  • are familiar with the sampling logic,
  • are knowledge about the typical pitfalls of conducting cases studies,
  • are knowledgeable in writing up case studies for publications and addressing, typical critiques from reviewers.

The course will mainly be based on discussions of basic readings on case studies and “best practice“ examples that are provided on the learning platform in advance by the lecturer. In addition, participants will have the chance to discuss their own research design in class.

You have to register for the 5th International Research Workshop to participate in this course.

Propensity Score Matching

Institution: see Organisers & Acknowledgements

Program of study: International Research Workshop

Lecturer: Rafael Rucha (Leuphana University Lüneburg)

Date: 05.10.2011, 09:00 – 17:30

Room: n.s.

Max. number of participants: 25

Semester periods per week: n.s.

Credit Points: 5 CP for participating in the whole IRWS

Language of instruction: English/German (depending on participants)

Contents:

1. Potential Outcome Approach and the Fundamental Evaluation Problem
2. Parameters of Interest and Selection Bias
3. Propensity Score Matching
3.a. Assumptions
3.b. Propensity Score Estimation
3.c. Matching Algorithms
3.d. Evaluation of Matching
3.e. Effect Estimation
4. Further Topics:
4.a. Matching Combined with Other Methods
4.b. Sensitivity Analysis
4.c. Outlook

You have to register for the 5th International Research Workshop to participate in this course.