GESIS Summer School in Survey Methodology

Why attend the GESIS Summer School?

At the GESIS Summer School in Survey Methodology you will

• receive high quality training in state of the art techniques and methods of survey research;
• find courses that equip you with essential skills in how to design, plan, conduct, and document all kinds of surveys;
• find courses that teach you how to analyze survey data;
• find both courses that give a broad overview of survey methods and courses that intensively discuss special interest topics in survey research;
• meet new people from different fields and from all over the world to network and discuss your research with.

Who should attend the GESIS Summer School?

The GESIS Summer School is made for you if you are an advanced graduate or PhD student, a post-doc, junior researcher, or survey professional from any relevant field, who:

• is interested in improving their general knowledge and skills in survey methodology;
• is planning to run an own survey or is working for a large-scale survey project;
• wants to update their methodological expertise in specific areas of survey methodology;
• wishes to engage in methodological research with survey data;
• wants to better understand processes of data collection;
• wants to learn how to assess data quality;
• wants to learn how to properly analyze survey data.

Prerequisites

In addition to the prerequisites mentioned in the syllabi of the courses, you are expected to

• have basic knowledge of empirical research methods;
• have a good command of English, as the Summer School will entirely be held in English.

Course structure

Short courses are three-day courses that aim at updating participants’ skills to better fulfill the entrance requirements of some one-week courses or at providing instruction in a specialized area. Short courses consist of 4 hours of classes per day.

One-week courses consist of about 5-6 hours of classes a day of which around 2 hours are tutorials or labs or exercises (details for each course are provided in the course descriptions).

All courses are full-day events. Thus, participants can only register for one course per week!

Plenary and Social Program

Evening talks - every Monday at 6:30 PM - followed by some networking with "virtual drinks" in breakout rooms.

• 03 August: Official opening of the 9th GESIS Summer School in Survey Methodology by the GESIS president Prof. Dr. Christof Wolf with a keynote speech.
• 10 August: JProf. Dr. Claudia Wagner: Service and Research at the Computational Social Science Department at GESIS
• 17 August: Prof. Dr. Beatrice Rammstedt (deputy GESIS president): Service and Research at the GESIS Department Survey Design and Methodology

Certificates of attendance

Participants of both short courses and one-week courses will receive one certificate of attendance per course at the end of the course, provided they have attended at least 80% of the course time.

ECTS

The Graduate School of Economic and Social Sciences/Center for Doctoral Studies in Social and Behavioral Sciences (CDSS) at the University of Mannheim acknowledges the workload for regular attendance, satisfactory work on daily assignments  and successful completion of a written assignment in the form of a written paper with 4 European Credit Transfer System (ECTS) points. In order to obtain ECTS points, participants in courses with 24 hours of classes per week are asked to submit a paper of 6000 words. Participants in courses with 30 hours of classes per week are asked to submit a paper of 5000 words. Participants are requested to agree with their lecturers on a topic, prior to submitting a paper/report of about 5000/6000 words up to 4 weeks after the end of the Summer School. ECTS points cannot be obtained only for participation in a main course. Applicants are advised to contact their home institution to inquire about the recognition of ECTS points acknowledged for regular attendance and the above mentioned course workload by the University of Mannheim. Note that you will be charged an administration fee of 50,00 € (4 ECTS) per course, respectively.

For short courses ECTS points cannot be obtained.

Fees and registration information

Please see the Terms and conditions of participation for our cancellation and reimbursement policy.

You can book the courses here.

Scholarships

Scholarships sponsored by the European Research Association (ESRA) are available. You can find detailed information on how to apply here.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

If you need more information or if you have further questions, have a look at our FAQ.

GESIS Summer School Archive

The schedules of past GESIS Summer Schools are available through our archive.