Staff

The many faces of GESIS

Vita

Sebastian E. Wenz is a senior researcher and deputy head of the team Training.

Before joining GESIS in December 2015, Sebastian worked as a research associate at the LIfBi — Leibniz-Institute for Educational Trajectories, at the National Educational Panel Study (NEPS), and in his own BMBF-funded project on "Discrimination in Education: Micro Mechanisms and Macro Determinants".

Sebastian E. Wenz defended his dissertation on "Discrimination in Education" at the University of Bamberg in 2017. It has been published in the GESIS Scientific Series and is available open access via SSOAR.

From 2003 to 2009 he studied Social Sciences (Sociology, Social Psychology, Statistics, Educational Psychology) at the University of Mannheim (Germany) and Indiana University Bloomington (USA).

Service

Sebastian is scientific coordinator of both the GESIS Summer School in Survey Methodology and the GESIS Spring Seminar.

Research

In his research Sebastian is concerned with both substantive and methodological problems: His substantive interests mainly revolve around questions from Sociology of Education, Discrimination, and Stereotypes and Prejudice. In particular, he is interested in educational inequality between different groups of students and teachers' stereotypes, prejudices, and discriminatory behavior towards students of different socioeconomic and ethnic background as well as different gender.

Methodologically, areas Sebastian is working on include Causal Inference, Directed Acyclic Graphs (DAGs), Quantile Regression, Experimental Designs, Survey Methodology, and Monte Carlo Simulations. He works on questions of how to conceptualize, identify, and estimate discrimination with different designs using DAGs. In his research on Quantile Regression, he investigates the potentials and limitations of both conditional and unconditional quantile regression estimators for sociological and other social science research.


Publications

Journal article

Hoenig, Kerstin, and Sebastian E. Wenz. 2021. "Education, health behavior, and working conditions during the pandemic: Evidence from a German sample." European Societies 23 (1): S275-S288. doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/14616696.2020.1824004.

Wenz, Sebastian E., and Kerstin Hoenig. 2020. "Ethnic and Social Class Discrimination in Education: Experimental Evidence from Germany." Research in Social Stratification and Mobility 65 100461. doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rssm.2019.100461.

Wenz, Sebastian E.. 2019. "What Quantile Regression Does and Doesn't Do: A Commentary on Petscher & Logan (2014)." Child Development 2018. doi: https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.13141.

Wenz, Sebastian E., and Tobias Linberg. 2017. "Ausmaß und Verteilung sozioökonomischer und migrationsspezifischer Ungleichheiten im Sprachstand fünfjähriger Kindergartenkinder." Journal for Educational Research Online 9 (1): 77-98. https://www.pedocs.de/volltexte/2017/12967.

Chapter in an edited book

Berendes, Karin, Tobias Linberg, Sebastian E. Wenz, Hans-Günther Roßbach, Thorsten Schneider, and Sabine Weinert. 2019. "Kindergarten and Elementary School: Starting Cohort 2 of the National Educational Panel Study." 2. In Education as a Lifelong Process: The German National Educational Panel Study (NEPS), edited by Hans-Peter Blossfeld, and Hans-Günther Roßbach, Edition ZfE 3, 215-230. Wiesbaden: Springer VS. doi: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-23162-0_12. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-658-23162-0_12.

Berendes, Karin, Doreen Fey, Tobias Linberg, Sebastian E. Wenz, Hans-Günther Roßbach, Thorsten Schneider, and Sabine Weinert. 2011. "13 Kindergarten and Elementary School." In Education as a Lifelong Process: The German National Educational Panel Study (NEPS), edited by Hans-Peter Blossfeld, Hans-Günther Roßbach, and Jutta von Maurice, Zeitschrift für Erziehungswissenschaft. Special Issue 14, 203-216. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften. doi: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11618-011-0187-2.

Monograph

Wenz, Sebastian E.. 2020. Discrimination in Education: Methodology, Theory, and Empirics of Teachers' Stereotypes, Prejudice, and Discriminatory Behavior. GESIS Scientific Series 26. Cologne: GESIS – Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences. doi: https://doi.org/10.21241/ssoar.67307. https://www.ssoar.info/ssoar/handle/document/67307.

Working and discussion paper

Homuth, Christoph, Johannes Thielemann, and Sebastian E. Wenz. 2023. Measuring elementary school teachers' stereotypes in the NEPS SC2. NEPS Survey Papers 108. doi: https://doi.org/10.5157/NEPS:SP108:1.0. https://www.lifbi.de/Portals/2/NEPS%20Survey%20Papers/NEPS_SP108_1.0.pdf.

Wenz, Sebastian E., Melanie Olczyk, and Georg Lorenz. 2016. Measuring Teachers' Stereotypes in the NEPS. NEPS Survey Papers 3. Bamberg: Leibniz Institute for Educational Trajectories. https://www.neps-data.de/Portals/0/Survey%20Papers/SP_III.pdf.

Presentation at a conference

Wenz, Sebastian E., Homuth Christoph, and Thielemann Johannes. 2022. "The Accuracy of German Teachers’ Stereotypes and its Determinants." GEBF Tagung 2022, Online, 2022-03-11.

Wenz, Sebastian E.. 2021. "Potentials and limitations of quantile regression as a tool in migration research." 18th IMISCOE Annual Conference, Online, 2021-07-07.

Wenz, Sebastian E.. 2021. "Potentials and Limitations of Quantile Regression in Migration Research and Beyond." ESRA 2021: 9th Conference of the European Survey Research Association, Virtual, Munich, 2021-07-02.

Wenz, Sebastian E.. 2021. "The immigrant-native test score gap: A quantile regression perspective." 3rd Academy of Sociology Conference: "Cohesive Societies? Analytical-empirical Perspectives", Online, 2021-09-29.

Wenz, Sebastian E.. 2020. "Defining and identifying discrimination using DAGs." Frühjahrstagung der DGS-Sektion "Methoden der empirischen Sozialforschung", Universität Potsdam, 2020-03-06.

Wenz, Sebastian E.. 2019. "Kompetenzheterogenität in Klassen: Der Effekt auf die mittlere Kompetenz und Kompetenzdisparitäten." GEBF Tagung 2019, 2019-02-25.

Wenz, Sebastian E., and Kerstin Hoenig. 2019. "The effect of classroom achievement heterogeneity on achievement and inequality." ISA RC28 Spring Meeting 2019, Goethe University of Frankfurt, Munich, 2019-03-21.

Wenz, Sebastian E.. 2018. "Poster: Useful and not so Useful Definitions of Discrimination by Human and Non-Human Decision Makers." 2nd European Symposium on Societal Challenges in Computational Social Science: Bias and Discrimination.

Wenz, Sebastian E., and Kerstin Hoenig. 2018. "The Effect of Classroom Achievement Heterogeneity on Achievement and Inequality. ." Amsterdam Centre for Inequality Studies (AMCIS) Conference, Amsterdam Centre for Inequality Studies (AMCIS), Amsterdam, 2018-07-05.

Wenz, Sebastian E., and Dennis Köthemann. 2018. "The Potential of Quantile Regression for the Comparative Study of Educational Inequalities." ESA RN-21 Midterm Conference, Instytut Socjologii, Jagiellonian University, Cracow.

Köthemann, Dennis, and Sebastian E. Wenz. 2017. "The Nexus Between Social Background and Educational Inequalities: What can we learn by Comparing Results of Linear and Unconditional Quantile Regression?" ESRA 2017: 7th Conference of the European Survey Research Association, University of Lisbon, Munich.

Wenz, Sebastian E.. 2016. "Quantilsregression: Ein neues Tool für die Empirische Bildungsforschung?" GEBF 2016, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Munich.

Presentation not at a conference

Wenz, Sebastian E.. 2023. "Moderne Kausalanalyse und ihre Implikationen fur die Erforschung von Ungleichheit und Diskriminierung im Bildungswesen." Pädagogische Hochschule St. Gallen, 2023-04-04.

Hoenig, Kerstin, and Sebastian E. Wenz. 2020. "Education, health behavior, and working conditions during the pandemic: Evidence from a German Sample." DIE – Seminar zu coronabezogener Forschung, Deutsches Institut für Erwachsenenbildung Leibniz-Zentrum für Lebenslanges Lernen e. V., Bonn, 2020-10-07.

Event

Wenz, Sebastian E., Nora Müller, Klaus Pforr, and Lynn-Malou Lutz. 2021. "AS Workshop: Causality in the Social Sciences III." AS Workshop: Causality in the Social Sciences III, Online, 2021-10-14 - 2021-10-15. https://www.gesis.org/causality-workshop.