Public Call for Contributions to the GESIS Symposium
“Advances in Scale Development in the Social Sciences: Ensuring Validity”
GESIS, Mannheim, Thursday 01 – Friday 02 December 2016
Aims and Scope
GESIS provides a unique venue for interdisciplinary expert meetings and symposia, to which we warmly invite you. This year’s two-day symposium on Advances in Scale Development will focus on how to ensure validity throughout the whole process of scale development. Key experts bridging different disciplines (e.g., social sciences, psychology, sociology) will exchange ideas about best-practice and cutting-edge advances. The following topics might be discussed: “Recommended methods of instrument development”; “Relationship between reliability and validity”; “Mathematical approaches to content validity”; “Criterion-based scale development”; “Validity beyond the MTMM-matrix”; “Ensuring cross-cultural validity” etc. Theoretical approaches, critical discussions, and empirical examples can be submitted. Innovative contributions in early developmental stages are also welcome.
We are happy to welcome Michael Eid (Berlin), Ronald Fischer (Wellington, NZ), Peter Lugtig (Utrecht), Tenko Raykov (Michigan), and Matthias Ziegler (Berlin) who all have agreed to give talks and participate. The meeting and informal get-togethers provide ample opportunity to critically review validation approaches, identify challenges in current scale development practices, and discover possible remedies. We expect valuable contributions that are likely to shape survey research. The organizers will invite all contributors to internationally publish the conference outcomes, e.g., as a special issue or as conference notes.
GESIS invites interested researchers to attend the meeting. Specifics about the short oral presentation format will be provided in due time. Authors interested in contributing to the GESIS symposium should submit their proposal (max. 350 words) to matthias.bluemke(at)gesis(dot)org
Deadline for submission: July 18, 2016
Decision: August 19, 2016
Registration (latest): September 16, 2016
We look forward to welcoming you in Mannheim. More information on traveling and accommodation can be found here.