Workshops

Roland Imhoff, University of Mainz

Beyond binaries – Why continuous manipulations facilitate strong tests of theory

Psychology, and social psychology, in particularly is obsesses what other have called ying-yang designs – comparing two discrete conditions on a variable of interest. The effect of temperature is explored by comparing a “hot” with a “cold” condition, social influence research constrasts “majority” with “minority” influence and construal level theory typically pits “abstract” vs. “concrete” construals against each other, to name only a few. As I will argue in my talk, this research strategy is justifiable only under two specific conditions: either the world is indeed binary or the relation between the IV and DV is strictly linear, so that any two discrete positions on the continuous IV are equally suited to test the relation to the DV. Neither the former, nor the latter is well justified, however. For the most part, the world is neither binary nor strictly linear. I will thus try to discuss how ying-yang designs inhibit strong tests of underlying theories as they introduce ambiguitiy whether falsification or nul results can be attributed to the level of theory (incorrect predictions) or just the level of auxiliary assumptions (coincidentally picked the “wrong” position on the continuum, manipulation not “strong” enough). I will demonstrate that for the field of social comparisons and its reliance on artifically chosen “similar” vs. “dissimilar” comparison standards. Students will then be encouraged to apply this reasoning to their own research area in small group works. We will close the workshopby discussing these examples and ways to overcome this limitation.

Bio: Roland Imhoff is a professor for social and legal psychology at the Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz (since 2015). His research interests span from basic social cognition topics like comparison and categorization to intergroup relations, political attitudes like conspiracy mentality, representations of history, and indirect measures of sexual interest. He has been editor-in-chief at the European Journal of Social Psychology and currently serves the European Association as Journal Officer in the Executive Committtee and Chair of the Consortium for Social Psychological and Personality Science. He is passionate about open science, vegan cooking, fermentation and his three children.

Robert Klemmensen, Lund University

Introduction to Difference-in-Differences (DiD) and Regression Discontinuity Designs (RDD)

This workshop gives a short introduction to the statistical software R. the goal is that participants can import various data formats and get data in shape for analysis. The second part of the workshop introduces student to Regressions Discontinuity and Difference in Difference Designs.

Participants who have not worked in R before are asked to install R Studio and do some introductory tutorial available on the Internet about R, e.g. https://moderndive.netlify.app/1-getting-started.html.

Luca Varadi, Central European University

Conducting qualitative interviews and group discussions about difficult topics and combining these with quantitative approaches

In this workshop we will discuss all steps related to face-to-face qualitative data collection methods (interviews and group discussions) in online and offline settings.

In the first part of the workshop, we will overview:

• The pros and cons of interviews and group discussions,
• The pros and cons of online vs. offline data collection,
• The integration of qualitative and quantitative approaches in complex studies.

In the second part of the workshop, we will work with students’ existing projects and will:

• Put together interview guides that can work for difficult and inconvenient topics,
• Discuss research ethics and the best ways to recruit participants,
• Practice effective techniques for keeping respondents on track,
• Prepare for difficult situations.

BIO: Luca Varadi is a former Marie Sklodowska-Curie research fellow and Assistant Professor in the Nationalism Studies Program at Central European University. Her research focuses on ethnic prejudices and especially on the formation of prejudice in adolescence.

Luca Varadi obtained her PhD in sociology at the Humboldt University in Berlin and afterwards served as a research fellow at Humboldt University and the University of Hamburg. She wrote her dissertation about the attitudes of Hungarian teenagers towards the Roma minority that was based on a survey of 1000 students. Her book, ‘Youths Trapped in Prejudice’ was published in 2014 at Springer.

Luca Varadi graduated in 2006 from the Faculty of Social Sciences of the Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest and specialized in ethnic and minority studies. Between 2006 and 2008 she was involved in research on migration and integration and worked for the Hungarian Academy of Science’s Research Institute of Ethnic and National Minorities and for the Menedék Organisation for Migrants. In Germany, she participated in the Interdisciplinary Institute for Conflict and Violence Research’s study on Group-Focused Enmity in Europe. Currently, she is working on a longitudinal study mapping the formation of common social norms in school classes and their effect on the intergroup attitudes of teenagers. Luca Váradi also works together with teachers and NGO-s to utilise research results for school-based intervention programs against prejudice.

Jonas Rees, Universitaet Bielefeld

From collective remembrance to collective forgetting: An empirical perspective on the current state of the German culture of memory

The workshop focuses on benefits and challenges of representative surveys at the intersection of science and practice. It will cover some basic concepts of representative surveys, thoughts on survey design in collaboration with practitioners and the application of surveys in practice. Participants will be encouraged to develop ideas on how to inform research by practice and incorporate these into their scientific work if feasible.

BIO: please look at https://ekvv.uni-bielefeld.de/pers_publ/publ/PersonDetail.jsp?personId=26385901&lang=EN

Jonas Rees, Universitaet Bielefeld

From collective remembrance to collective forgetting: An empirical perspective on the current state of the German culture of memory

The workshop focuses on benefits and challenges of representative surveys at the intersection of science and practice. It will cover some basic concepts of representative surveys, thoughts on survey design in collaboration with practitioners and the application of surveys in practice. Participants will be encouraged to develop ideas on how to inform research by practice and incorporate these into their scientific work if feasible.

BIO: please look at https://ekvv.uni-bielefeld.de/pers_publ/publ/PersonDetail.jsp?personId=26385901&lang=EN