Compentence Centers at GESIS

For many years, GESIS has offered high quality services for selected international survey programmes. This is especially true for those programmes where GESIS is involved in data collection or is responsible for data preparation, archiving and distribution. These longtime activities of GESIS have been bundled in the research data centers, which the criteria of the German Council for Social and Economic Data (RatSWD).

• The European Data Laboratory for Comparative Social Research – EUROLAB was established in 1996. Since then it supports international comparative social research by providing on-site infrastructure services such as access to comparative data bases, methodological, content related and technical support. The EUROLAB also organizes International symposia and conferences
• RDC ALLBUS concentrates know-how and offers advice concerning research design, data collection, data preparation and archiving of the biennial German General Social Survey.
• The RCD German Microdata Lab have longterm competencies, offers comprehensive services concerning the microdata of official statistics and develops instruments for the implementation of social scientific concepts.
• RDC International Survey Programmes brings together expertise from several international survey programmes. This includes Eurobarometer, International Social Survey Programme (ISSP), European Values Study (EVS), Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES) and PIREDEU.
• RDC Elections  pools expertise on survey data about state and federal level elections in Germany, as well as on consecutive surveys such as the Politbarometer and ARD-DeutschlandTrend. We are currently preparing the data sets of the German Longitudinal Election Study (GLES).
• CEWS - Center of Excellence Women and Science is the national hub for realization of equal opportunities for both women and men in science and research in Germany. CEWS serves as a think tank for this political field, offering impetus for new ideas, initiating processes of change in support of science as well as actively creating and engaging the necessary transfer processes between science and politics.
• The GESIS knowhow in the area of national and international comparative social monitoring and social reporting is bundled in a furtern competence center – the Social Indicators Research Centre (ZSI) with research based services in the areas: Social Indicators Research and Social Reporting, Welfare Research and Measuring Quality of Life, Social Inequality and Cross-National Comparisons.