GESIS Scientific Series

Outstanding research results at GESIS are published in the GESIS series. They contain final reports of projects, doctoral dissertations and the research status of major areas of activity.

In our publication archive you find former GESIS research and conference reports, as well as publications ofthe former IZ, ZA and ZUMA.

GESIS-Series:

• Volume 1: Nicht-reaktive Erhebungsverfahren
• Volume 2: Translationswissenschaft und international vergleichende Umfrageforschung: Qualitätssicherung bei Fragebogenübersetzungen als Gegenstand einer Prozessanalyse
• Volume 3: Design Effects: Model-based versus Design-based Approach
• Volume 4: Measuring Ethnicity in Cross-National Comparative Survey Research
• Volume 5: Information Retrieval- Mehrwertdienste für Digitale Bibliotheken. Crosskonkordanzen und Bradfordizing
• Volume 6: ISSP Data Report. Attitudes towards the Role of Government.
• Volume 7: Measuring Occupation and Labour Status in Cross-National Comparative Surveys
• Volume 8: Umfrageforschung. Entscheidungsgrundlage für Politik und Wissenschaft
• Volume 9: The IE-4 - Construction and Validation of a Short Scale for the Assessment of Locus of Control
• Volume 10: Demographic Standards for Surveys and Polls in Germany and Poland. National and European Dimension
• Volume 11: femlogit. Implementation und Anwendung der multinominalen logistischen Regression mit „fixed effects“
• Volume 12: Regionale Standards. Ausgabe 2013. 2. vollständig überarbeitete und erweiterte Auflage
• Volume 13: ISSP Data Report Religious Attitudes and Religious Change

GESIS Series Volume 13
ISSP Data Report
Religious Attitudes and Religious Change
Insa Bechert and Markus Quandt (Ed.)
Köln: GESIS 2013: ISBN 978-3-86819-022-9; ISSN 1869-2869; 19,- EUR

The annual survey of the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP) provides data on topics relevant in social research. This current ISSP Data Report – Religious Attitudes and Religious Change examines data collected at three different points over 17 years, from up to 42 ISSP member countries, covering various facets of respondents’ attitudes towards Church and Religion. Individual chapters were written by different members of the ISSP community thereby offering a cross-national, comparative perspective on particular aspects of religious attitudes and religious change via ISSP data. Overall, this report offers insights into the religious landscapes of various countries and in particular information about the factors influencing the process of religious change over the past two decades.

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GESIS Series Volume 12
Regionale Standards
Ausgabe 2013
2. vollständig überarbeitete und erweiterte Auflage
Arbeitsgruppe Regionale Standards (Hg.)
Köln: GESIS 2013: ISBN 978-3-86819-021-2; ISSN 1869-2869; 24,- EUR

Die „Regionalen Standards“ gehen zurück auf die Initiative eines gemeinsamen Arbeitskreises, bestehend aus Vertretern des Statistischen Bundesamtes, der Arbeitsgemeinschaft Sozialwissenschaftlicher Institute e. V. (ASI) und des ADM Arbeitskreis Deutscher Markt- und Sozialforschungsinstitute e. V. Sie stellen ein Angebot für die Forschung in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland dar. Die „Regionalen Standards“ beschreiben Gebietsabgrenzungen und Instrumente zur Typisierung von Regionen, wie sie in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland von der amtlichen Statistik und/oder der Markt- und Sozialforschung in gewisser Regelmäßigkeit eingesetzt werden. Zusätzlich werden Datensätze aus unterschiedlichen Quellen vorgestellt, die für die Regionalisierung von Bevölkerungsumfragen genutzt werden können und für die Forschung (teils jedoch mit Einschränkungen) zur Verfügung stehen. Ergänzt werden die „Regionalen Standards“ durch eine jährlich aktualisierte Tabellenanalyse aus dem Mikrozensus, zu beziehen über die Internetseiten www.destatis.de, www.gesis.org und www.adm-ev.de.

GESIS Series Volume 11
femlogit
Implementation und Anwendung der multinominalen logistischen Regression mit „fixed effects“
Klaus Pforr
Köln: GESIS 2013: ISBN 978-3-86819-020-5; ISSN 1869-2869; 19,- EUR

Fixed effects models have become a prime tool for causal analysis, as they allow to control for unobserved heterogeneity. As of today, fixed effects models have been derived and implemented for many statistical software packages for continuous, dichotomous and count-data dependent variables. For multinomial categorical dependent variables such a model has been derived in a seminal paper by Chamberlain (1980), but no implementation is available. The dissertation on hand closes this research gap by delivering the first implementation of Chamberlain’s model in a widely available statistical package (Stata). Its applicability is shown by extending Schröder’s (2010) work in the sociology of the family and Kohler’s (2005) work in political sociology.

GESIS-Series Volume 10
Demographic Standards for Surveys and Polls in Germany and Poland
National and European Dimension
Jürgen H.P. Hoffmeyer-Zlotnik, Uwe Warner (Ed.)
Köln: GESIS 2012: ISBN 978-3-86819-019-9; ISSN 1869-2869; 24,- EUR

The groundwork for this volume was laid at a workshop “Demographic Standards for Surveys and Polls in Germany and Poland - National and European Dimension” in Berlin in August 2011, which was organised by GESIS in cooperation with the Social Science Research Centre Berlin (WZB). The idea was to take a look at the way socio-demographic variables are standardised in countries in which standardisation is taken seriously. Of particular interest in this regard were those countries in which data collection has been subjected to major discontinuities or disruptions in the last two decades. This was the case in the former Warsaw Pact countries – as a result of system change – and in the new countries created after the dissolution of the former Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia. All these countries experienced disruptions and discontinuities not only in official statistics but also in the surveys conducted by market and social researchers. We chose Poland, the Czech Republic, and Slovenia because it was evident that they place importance on the standardisation of socio-demographic variables. In all three countries a new departure in official statistics took place in the early 1990s. Further changes were necessary in 2004 when these countries simultaneously acceded to the EU, because the new EU member states were obliged to submit data to Eurostat from May of that year onwards. As a result, the comparability of survey data assumed greater importance. The first three chapters of the present volume are devoted respectively to descriptions of the Demographische Standards for Germany as of 2010; to a prospect for demographic standards for surveys and polls in Slovenia; and to the standardisation of socio-demographic variables in surveys in the Czech Republic, followed by a chapter on the European standardisation process initiated in 2005 when the Directors of Social Statistics created a task force for the harmonisation of core social variables. The “Core Social Variables” instrument proposed by the task force and adopted by Eurostat is due to be implemented in EU social surveys by the end of 2013. The chapters that follow deal with the measurement of individual variables.

GESIS-Series Volume 9
The IE-4
Construction and Validation of a Short Scale for the Assessment of Locus of Control
Anastassiya Kovaleva
Köln: GESIS 2010: ISBN 978-3-86819-017-5; ISSN 1869-2869; 19,- EUR

Locus of control describes a generalized belief about whether outcomes of behavior are determined by one’s actions or by forces outside one’s control. Over decades, studies in sociology and psychology have reported that a sense of control is correlated with physical and mental well-being, vocational behavior, general health, healthy aging, and coping with unemployment.

In order to assess locus of control within strict time constraints, as often required in survey research, an efficient questionnaire the four-item scale for the assessment of internal and external locus of control (Internal External Locus of Control-4, IE-4) was developed and validated. The IE-4 was constructed and validated in three studies. The scale proved to have a stable factorial structure and sufficient construct validity. The thesis concludes with a discussion of the efficiency of the IE-4, i.e. its satisfactory psychometric properties and brevity.

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GESIS Series Volume 8
Umfrageforschung. Entscheidungsgrundlage für Politik und Wissenschaft
Christian König, Matthias Stahl und Erich Wiegand (Hg.)
Köln: GESIS 2011: ISBN 978-3-86819-016-8
ISSN 1869-2869
19,- EUR 

Der vorliegende Tagungsband dokumentiert die Beiträge der wissenschaftlichen Tagung "Umfrageforschung - Entscheidungsgrundlage für Politik und Wissenschaft", die am 30. Juni und 1. Juli 2011 gemeinsam vom Statistischen Bundesamt, dem ADM Arbeitskreis Deutscher Markt- und Sozialforschungsinstitute e.V. und der Arbeitsgemeinschaft Sozialwissenschaftlicher Institute e.V. (ASI) in Wiesbaden durchgeführt wurde.

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GESIS Series Volume 7
Measuring Occupation and Labour Status in Cross-National Comparative Surveys
Jürgen H.P. Hoffmeyer-Zlotnik, Uwe Warner
Bonn: GESIS: ISBN 978-3-86819-015-1 ISSN 1869-2869 29,- EUR 

In the social sciences, the occupation variable is used to derive socio-economic status and/or occupational prestige. This book describes occupation as an indicator of social status, occupation as an indicator of prestige and labor status as an indicator of position in the life-cycle. First, we identify variables necessary to measure occupation, employment and the labour force concept from ILO (International Labour Organisation, Geneva). Second, we introduce strategies for harmonizing the underlying social concepts of the measurements in surveys across countries. Third, we present our own instruments for measuring occupation and labour status in cross-national comparative surveys.

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GESIS-Series Volume 6
ISSP Data Report. Attitudes towards the Role of Government
Insa Bechert and Markus Quandt
Bonn: GESIS 2010: ISBN 978-3-86819-013-7 ISSN 1869-2869 19,- EUR

The International Social Survey Programme (ISSP) provides annual data on various topics relevant for social research. The current report deals with data collected at four different points of time over a 21 year span, from up to 36 ISSP member countries. The topics are broadly consolidated under the term “Role of Government”. Each chapter focuses on an individual topic area under this heading, shedding light on the ISSP data with their specific content and particularities. Overall, this report offers some insights into specific national situations. It also specifically takes a cross-national comparative perspective while simultaneously displaying selected core trends in political attitudes over the past two decades.

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GESIS-Series Volume 5
Information Retrieval- Mehrwertdienste für Digitale Bibliotheken Crosskonkordanzen und Bradfordizing
Philipp Mayr
Bonn: GESIS 2010: ISBN 978-3-86819-012-0 ISSN 1869-2869 29,- EUR

This thesis proposes two value-added approaches for search systems which treat typical problems in searching scientific literature and seek to improve the retrieval situation on a measurable level. The two value-added services, semantic treatment of heterogeneity (the example of cross-concordances) and re-ranking on Bradfordizing, which are applied in different search phases, are described in detail and their effectiveness in typical subject-specific searches is evaluated in the empirical part of the thesis. We used topics and data from two evaluation projects (CLEF and KoMoHe) for the tests. The intellectually assessed documents come from seven academic abstracting and indexing databases representing social science, political science, economics, psychology and medicine. The results of this work will be integrated in the GESIS project IRM.

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GESIS-Series Volume 4
Measuring Ethnicity in Cross-National Comparative Survey Research.
Jürgen H.P. Hoffmeyer-Zlotnik, Uwe Warner
Bonn: GESIS 2010: ISBN 978-3-86819-011-3; ISSN 1869-2869, 15,- EUR

This book describes the development of an instrument for the measurement of ethnicity in cross-national comparative survey research. First, we identify the data that must to be collected on ethnicity as a core variable. Second, we examine the way in which the national statistics offices of the European Union member states and the major social surveys handle this theme. Third, we present our own instrument for the measurement of ethnicity as a background variable in cross-national comparative survey research.

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GESIS-Series Volume 3
Design Effects: Model-based versus Design-based Approach
Matthias Ganninger
Bonn: GESIS 2009: ISBN 978-3-86819-010-6, ISSN 1869-2869, 19,- EUR

The design effect is receiving increased attention in multi-national sample survey projects like the European Social Survey (ESS). On the one hand, model-based methods are applied for the prediction of expected design effects in order to ex ante harmonize the effective sample size of different samples. On the other hand, also design-based estimators can be used for the ex post estimation of design effects from sample data. This thesis compares the design-based and the model-based approach to design effects and evaluates their quality and applicability in real-world situations. This evaluation is based on a large-scale Monte-Carlo simulation study and on data from selected countries of the ESS.

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GESIS-Series Volume 2
Translationswissenschaft und international vergleichende Umfrageforschung:
Qualitätssicherung bei Fragebogenübersetzungen als Gegenstand einer Prozessanalyse
Dorothée Behr
Bonn: GESIS 2009: ISBN 978-3-86819-007-6, ISSN 1869-2869, 15,- EUR

High-quality questionnaire translations are crucial for data comparability in cross-national survey research. Special quality assurance methods are used to ensure translation quality. Based on a case study from the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP), this book analyses the team approach: Two independent translations were discussed in a team involving translators and survey experts. Recordings and transcription of the team discussion were available for translation process research. This research focused on problems and problem-solving strategies, on the assessment of the method and on the team’s understanding of translation quality. The book is addressed to translators and translation scholars as well as survey methodologists in cross-national survey research.

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GESIS-Series Volume 1:
Nicht-reaktive Erhebungsverfahren
Christian König, Matthias Stahl und Erich Wiegand
Bonn: GESIS 2009, ISSN 1869-2869, ISBN 978-3-86819-006-9, 10,- EUR

Der vorliegende Tagungsband dokumentiert die Beiträge der wissenschaftlichen Tagung „Nicht-reaktive Erhebungsverfahren”, die am 25. und 26. Juni 2009 gemeinsam vom Statistischen Bundesamt, dem ADM Arbeitskreis Deutscher Markt- und Sozialforschungsinstitute e.V. und der Arbeitsgemeinschaft Sozialwissenschaftlicher Institute e.V. (ASI) in Wiesbaden durchgeführt wurde.

GESIS-Series Volume 10
Demographic Standards for Surveys and Polls in Germany and Poland
National and European Dimension
Jürgen H.P. Hoffmeyer-Zlotnik, Uwe Warner (Ed.)
Köln: GESIS 2012: ISBN 978-3-86819-019-9; ISSN 1869-2869; 24,- EUR

The groundwork for this volume was laid at a workshop “Demographic Standards for Surveys and Polls in Germany and Poland - National and European Dimension” in Berlin in August 2011, which was organised by GESIS in cooperation with the Social Science Research Centre Berlin (WZB). The idea was to take a look at the way socio-demographic variables are standardised in countries in which standardisation is taken seriously. Of particular interest in this regard were those countries in which data collection has been subjected to major discontinuities or disruptions in the last two decades. This was the case in the former Warsaw Pact countries – as a result of system change – and in the new countries created after the dissolution of the former Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia. All these countries experienced disruptions and discontinuities not only in official statistics but also in the surveys conducted by market and social researchers. We chose Poland, the Czech Republic, and Slovenia because it was evident that they place importance on the standardisation of socio-demographic variables. In all three countries a new departure in official statistics took place in the early 1990s. Further changes were necessary in 2004 when these countries simultaneously acceded to the EU, because the new EU member states were obliged to submit data to Eurostat from May of that year onwards. As a result, the comparability of survey data assumed greater importance. The first three chapters of the present volume are devoted respectively to descriptions of the Demographische Standards for Germany as of 2010; to a prospect for demographic standards for surveys and polls in Slovenia; and to the standardisation of socio-demographic variables in surveys in the Czech Republic, followed by a chapter on the European standardisation process initiated in 2005 when the Directors of Social Statistics created a task force for the harmonisation of core social variables. The “Core Social Variables” instrument proposed by the task force and adopted by Eurostat is due to be implemented in EU social surveys by the end of 2013. The chapters that follow deal with the measurement of individual variables.

GESIS Series Volume 11
femlogit
Implementation und Anwendung der multinominalen logistischen Regression mit „fixed effects“
Klaus Pforr
Köln: GESIS 2013: ISBN 978-3-86819-020-5; ISSN 1869-2869; 19,- EUR

Fixed effects models have become a prime tool for causal analysis, as they allow to control for unobserved heterogeneity. As of today, fixed effects models have been derived and implemented for many statistical software packages for continuous, dichotomous and count-data dependent variables. For multinomial categorical dependent variables such a model has been derived in a seminal paper by Chamberlain (1980), but no implementation is available. The dissertation on hand closes this research gap by delivering the first implementation of Chamberlain’s model in a widely available statistical package (Stata). Its applicability is shown by extending Schröder’s (2010) work in the sociology of the family and Kohler’s (2005) work in political sociology.