Welcome at GESIS - Your Infrastructure for Empirical Research

Whether you are researching social change, processes of transition or other socially relevant topics, we can support you in conducting your own study, provide you with data for secondary analysis, help you with tools and methods developed by us to analyze the data and share our expertise.

Proven and new data collection methods

You are planning a survey or like to collect digital behavioral data or even combine the two? We can support you with the following services:

Collect data with the GESIS Panel: its samples can be used to collect and link both population-representative survey data and innovative digital behavioral data.

With our services, you can collect digital behavioral data yourself, such as smartphone-based surveys of survey and sensor data or browser-based data.

For valid answers to research questions, we have empirically tested survey instruments for you, estimate the measurement quality of your items or test them with cognitive pretests.

GESIS Guides are our knowledge box for you. There you will find structured information and practical recommendations for action relating to survey data and digital behavioral data.

Our team of experts will advise you individually on survey methods and on methods for collecting and analyzing digital behavioral data (DBD).

You can rely on our years of experience when it comes to sampling plans, drawing telephone samples, and implementing complex sample designs.

Looking for data for secondary analysis?

For many social science questions, data, that have already been collected, are available and can be used for secondary analyses without effort in our data archive.

Click here for our data catalog.

A special selection of data for analyses across time and national borders is presented here:

Longitudinal data on attitudes, behavior, values, social structure

Since 1980, the ALLBUS have surveyed the German population in representative cross-sectional samples at regular two-year intervals, using constant and variable questions.

Commissioned by the European Commission, the Eurobarometer surveys have been monitoring public opinion in the European Union since the early 1970s.

Since 1984 the ISSP has conducted a joint annual survey on topics of relevance to the social sciences. It is currently fielded in about 50 countries.

Some of our survey data was collected together with social media or web tracking data, thus expanding the analysis perspectives. But data from social media platforms and more can also be found in our data world.

The GLES has been observing and analyzing the electorate in methodologically diverse surveys since 2009. The new data from the federal election surveys is currently available.

The EVS is cross-national cross-sectional survey research program on values and attitudes, conducted at nine-year intervals since 1981.

Processing data for analysis

Special expertise is required for dealing with missing values, with different types of data, for comparison with reference data or for linking to other data sources. Take advantage of our experience and services and make your data ready for analysis.

We support you:

We advise you on weighting, imputation of missing values and non-response analyses and offer you the service of carrying these out for you.

We offer consulting and services for the harmonization of variables from different surveys.

We have tools and hands-on information for the collection and analysis of digital behavioral data.

We have the tools and metadata for you to process and analyze official German and European microdata.

Share your research output!

FAIRness comes first: GESIS supports Open Science and helps to make your research results findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable - in other words, FAIR.

In our repositories, you can archive, register and share your data, scripts, measuring instruments and publications on a long-term basis so that your research does not disappear.

Data services

Archive and share your data and syntax so that the scientific community can learn about and reuse your research.

Social Science Open Access Repository SSOAR

Share your publications and make them available Open Access to the scientific community.

We share our knowledge!

GESIS Training

GESIS Training offers courses on all topics of empirical social research with a focus on data analysis, survey methodology and computational social science.

GESIS Journals

Our journals Historical Social Research HSR with articles on new methods in historical social research and the journal methods, data, analyses with articles on the methods of survey research are specifically tailored to topics.

Meet the experts

You are more of a visual type? In our „Meet the Experts“ series, we teach the basics in audiovisual form.