WiSe 22/23: Experimental Approaches in Survey Research
Stefan Liebig
Comments
This course is structured in three parts: In the first part, the epistemological and methodological foundations of experiments and the history of experimental research in sociology are introduced. In the second part we concentrate on the problem of “external validity” of experiments and discuss various “solutions” of the problem. One methodological solution is the factorial survey design, which will be discussed in more detail. This method–originally developed by Peter Rossi in the late 1940s– became more and more popular over the last 25 years. It is used mainly in attitude related research and to study decision-making processes – e.g. to identify the factors that are important to take a job-offer or accept applicants for a job or which factors should be considered for a fair income at the workplace or a fair punishment in a trial. With its multifactorial experimental design and its capacity to integrate it into population surveys, factorial surveys promise to free scholars from making trade-offs between internal and external validity. Moreover, it pledges to overcome some fundamental methodological shortcomings of the classical item-based survey research. close
16 Class schedule
Regular appointments