Dear colleagues,

I would like to draw your attention to the sessions that are organized under the umbrella of or in collaboration with RC33 Logic and Methodology in Sociology at 5^th ISA Forum of Sociology 2025

• A full list with all sessions of RC33 Logic and Methodology in Sociology can be found here.
• Your abstracts can be submitted via the ISA website (link) by October 15, 2024 (24:00 UTC).
• More information on the venue can be found here.

Below you will find a selection of three sessions that are open to submissions from the field of qualitative and quantitative empirical social research.

With regard to the sessions 2 and 3, we are particularly looking forward to receiving abstracts that address the topics of the sessions from the perspective of quantitative empirical social research.

Best regards also on behalf of the co-organizers of the sessions below,

Hawal Shamon

Team lead Energy Social Science

Institute of Climate and Energy Systems

Jülich Systems Analysis (ICE-2)

Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH | 52425 Jülich
Mobile:  +49 160 92172835

E-Mail:     h.shamon@fz-juelich.de
Internet:  https://www.fz-juelich.de/en/ice/ice-2

ResearchGate: Hawal Shamon on ResearchGate

Session 1: Issues of Measurement Quality in Standardized Surveys
Hawal Shamon, Vanessa Schmieja
RC33 Logic and Methodology in Sociology (host committee)

Standardized surveys are a central pillar for data collection in social science. Despite the trend for online surveys in recent decades, more traditional survey modes are still being used frequently. Each of the survey modes comes with its pros and cons in terms of measurement quality, which is why mixed-mode surveys have become a useful alternative.

This session aims to promote the discussion of methodological advances in ensuring the measurement quality in surveys in single mode but also mixed-mode surveys as well as the usage of para and behavioral data for improving data quality. Contributions may cover but are not limited to the following research topics:
• Validity and reliability of measurement instruments
• Procedures and protocols to reduce (heterogeneity of) processing errors
• Effects of questionnaire design on respondents’ motivation during the survey
• Developments in the usage of para data for data quality checks
• Surveys and digital behavioral data
• Survey experiments
• Improvements in tackling item nonresponse
• Interviewer effects and coping strategies
• Application of mixed-mode designs to improve measurement quality

Session 2: Session: Future-Oriented Preferences: Methodological Challenges of Analyzing Transformative Issues
Hawal Shamon, Vanessa Schmieja, Stefan Böschen
RC33 Logic and Methodology in Sociology (host committee)

Pioneering, especially socially relevant, decisions about pressing issues of today require the consideration of possible, probable and desirable social developments and target states. For decision-makers in politics and business, understanding future preferences of the population is of crucial importance for predicting actors’ behavior (e.g., consumer behavior) to develop suitable measures and make well-founded (political) decisions that ensure long-term social welfare. Moreover, this challenge increases against the background of transformative change issues which are pointedly discussed as transitions in diverse sectors and their interplay as well.

Aligning to this empirical situation, there is the methodological challenge of how to identify future preferences for prevailing as well as preferences for upcoming issues in an empirically rich and methodologically sound manner. As the elicitation of future-oriented preferences cannot, in principle, follow a forecast mode, the discussion of how to overcome the hurdle of measuring future preferences turn into an eminently important research problem.

The objectives of this session are to discuss theoretical foundations for the measurement of future-oriented preferences as well as empirical approaches for the elicitation of future-oriented preferences. The session welcomes theoretical, conceptual and empirical contributions. In addition to isolated qualitative (e.g., focus group, qualitative interviews) and quantitative social science methods (e.g., discrete choice experiments, vignette studies), the combination of quantitative and qualitative methods in the sense of a mixed-methods approach or with computer-assisted simulations to investigate future-oriented preferences are very welcome.

Session 3: Exploring Systematically the Future - How to Capture the Unknown and Uncertain?
Stefan Vögele, Simon Brauner, Hawal Shamon
RC07 Futures Research (host committee)

Considering the rapid technological developments and their far-reaching social changes, the ability to anticipate possible futures in order to be able to react to them better prepared and at short notice is becoming increasingly important. At the same time, climate change is one of the greatest challenges of our time and requires the early development of innovative and future-oriented solutions. This session is dedicated to the systematic creation of complex socio-economic future scenarios in order to provide decision-makers in business, politics and society with a sound basis for strategic planning and innovation processes. In addition to contributions on content (including case studies from local to global), this session also welcomes methodological contributions focusing on the further development of established methods for exploring potential futures, such as the cross-impact balance, the Delphi method or trend extrapolation. We also encourage contributions that apply participatory approaches by involving citizens in the sense of citizen science into the research process and their reflection in terms of systematic knowledge production.