*** Apologies for cross-posting ***

Dear all,

The 7th Conference of the European Survey Research Association (ESRA) will take place from July 17 to 21 2017 in Lisbon, Portugal. Please submit paper abstracts by 4th December 2016!

We invite paper proposals for our session

"Quantitative Spatial Analysis of Micro and Macro Data: Methodological Challenges and Solutions".

The session intends to bring together methodological experiences made when working with spatial data in quantitative empirical social research. On the one hand, spatial data offers the opportunity to investigate the relationship between regional characteristics on the macro level. On the other hand, spatial data can be used to enrich survey data with structural information on a certain regional level, either to control for context effects or to explicitly analyse these effects and their interplay with mechanisms on the individual level. By using GIS, addresses of survey participants can be linked with objective measures of their neighbourhood (e.g. pollution data) or proximity to institutions (e.g. of educational institutions or workplaces). Thus, these data allow investigating the relevance of infrastructure distances for social action as well as processes of spatial spillovers and diffusion. In doing so, several methodological questions arise: What kind of regional level is adequate to what kind of question (MAUP)? And how can we handle social action at boarders of administrative units? To derive closer estimates of real individual distances and potential spaces of action a possible solution could be to weight the importance of neighbouring regions by information on actual traveling times with different means of transport. What are the challenges and limitations of these approaches and how can it be done reliably? Furthermore, innovative statistical methods are necessary to adequately analyse spatial data. Various regression models (e.g. SAR, SARAR, SLX, Durbin and others) address the spatial dependence in different ways and offer alternative approaches to identify different types of spatial spillovers or spatial interdependences, in cross-sectional and longitudinal data. Which types of models are adequate for which type of questions? Which models can be used to simultaneously analyse individual and aggregate data?

In sum, in this session we are especially interested in methodological and applied studies dealing with topics of: 1. Choice of adequate regional level and handling of borders when using administrative data 2. Connection of individual data and spatially aggregate as well as infrastructural data 3. Spatial analysis of time-series and cross-sectional data 4. Modelling spatial relationships (e.g. commuting flows, distances, traveling times, social interactions) 5. Modelling spatial interaction, spillover or diffusion processes 6. Further challenges and solutions when using georeferenced data

Henning Best (TU Kaiserslautern) Corinna Kleinert (Leibniz Institute for Educational Trajectories) Tobias Ruettenauer (TU Kaiserslautern) Michaela Sixt (Leibniz Institute for Educational Trajectories)