Methods of empirical social research
For over 20 years, members of the Department of Sociology have been researching and publishing on methods of empirical social research. During this time, more than 60 works (books, journal articles, book chapters) have been produced. The methodological team of the Department of Sociology is currently intensively involved in Austrian and cross-national survey research and takes part in several survey programs and research projects.
Participation in the Social Survey of Austria (SSÖ)
The SSÖ is conducted in Austria every two years in conjunction with the modules of the International Social Survey Program (ISSP). It is a nationwide representative survey funded by the Federal Ministry of Education, Science, and Research as part of the research infrastructure (bmbwf.gv.at). Funding for the SSÖ/ISSP is secured until 2026. This survey is conducted in cooperation with the sociology departments for methods and empirical social research of several Austrian universities (led by the University of Graz in cooperation with the University of Linz) and collects central political and social values and attitudes of Austrians every two years. Further information on the SSÖ can be found here.
Initiation and Implementation of the VIC Study 2020 – 2022
At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020, the World Value Survey Association launched the “Values in Crisis” study (VIC). The project involves a large-scale global study examining how political and social attitudes are fundamentally shaken by the Corona pandemic and whether profound processes of value change can be observed as a result of the crisis. The first survey, now completed, involved 15 countries. The method team at the University of Salzburg took over the archiving of the cross-national dataset, which is available here.
Two further waves of surveys were conducted in a longitudinal design and funded through HRSM structural funds. Thus, data from three waves in 2020, 2021, and 2022 are available for Austria here.
As part of the projects on the pandemic’s impact, two edited volumes were also published Open Access:
Aschauer, W.; Glatz, C. & Prandner, D. (2022) (Hrsg.). Die österreichische Gesellschaft während der Corona-Pandemie. Ergebnisse aus sozialwissenschaftlichen Umfragen. Wiesbaden: Springer-VS. doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-34491-7
Aschauer, W., Eder, A. & Prandner, D. (Hrsg.). (2024). Die Auswirkungen der Corona-Pandemie auf die österreichische Gesellschaft. Ergebnisse der Längsschnittstudie „Werte in der Krise 2020-2022“. Baden-Baden: NOMOS, doi.org/10.5771/9783748942696
Participation in the Digitize Project at the University of Vienna
As part of the “Digitize” project, a wave of the SSÖ survey was also funded. In addition, the Department of Sociology was involved in a work package for the development of the online panel, where several survey waves have already been conducted:
Participation in Preparatory Work for ASEP
The Austrian Socio-Economic Panel (ASEP) is funded by the Federal Ministry of Education, Science, and Research and conducted by Statistics Austria, responsible for project management, survey design, data collection, and quality assurance. This is a large-scale household survey that will enable longitudinal analyses to gain insights into processes of social change in Austria. The ASEP survey will implement a representative long-term survey of households and also allow for linking with administrative data. Wolfgang Aschauer and Christopher Etter are members of the scientific advisory board and are involved in the conception of questions on social and political attitudes.
Concerns about the Future in National and International Comparison
As part of a subject-oriented social structure analysis, Wolfgang Aschauer and Christopher Etter, together with Dimitri Prandner from JKU Linz, are connecting structural conditions with the current crisis experiences of people, which increasingly manifest in concerns about the future. They examine the measurement, determinants, and effects of future concerns on well-being, for which a separate scale was developed and used in the last two waves of the Social Survey of Austria and an online study in the D-A-CH region. Exciting insights have already been gained and are currently being presented at several international conferences (see presentations).
Basic methodological research:
Research on Data Quality in Surveys
When reviewing the methodological basic research conducted at the department over recent years, most of the work focuses on central questions in the area of data construction. Data collection in surveys is understood as a complex process that is susceptible to biases in several phases (e.g., in sampling, measurement errors and data interpretation). Through this holistic approach, data quality has to be analyzed comprehensively, and essential fragments of a theory of surveys are to be developed (see, e.g., the monograph by Reinhard Bachleitner, Martin Weichbold, and Wolfgang Aschauer here: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-531-92327-7).
Research on Challenges in Cultural and Cross-National Comparisons
Another focus of the Department of Sociology is addressing fundamental methodological challenges in cross-national and intercultural comparisons. Content validity in cultural comparison can only be achieved if the theoretical concepts are measured functionally equivalent across all cultures. The efforts have also resulted in an extensive monograph that currently represents a German-language standard work on the equivalence problem in surveys: see here. Current research activities in the context of intercultural survey research concern, for example, the comparability of concepts in specific research topics (e.g., Well-being, see here).
Strengthening Methodological and Survey Research in the Global South
In general, Martin Weichbold and Wolfgang Aschauer are currently very active in global methodological activities and survey research and participate in initiatives to strengthen survey research in the Global South. Wolfgang Aschauer is a member of the Global Center of Spatial Methods and Urban Sustainability (see here). At the SMUS conference in Botswana, Wolfgang Aschauer was active as a keynote speaker (see: here) he was active as a method trainer at the SMUS conference in Roorkee, India, (see here) and as a session organizer at the conference in Thailand in 2024 as a session organizer (see here).
International and Global Networks
In addition to the numerous research and publication achievements (publications), the Department of Sociology has contributed to extensive national and international networking of the department through the organization of international conferences (conferences) and a strong presence at national and international events (presentations). Wolfgang Aschauer is currently involved in the leadership committees of WAPOR (World Association of Public Opinion Research) as Chair of the Conference Committee (see here), and in 2023, he organized the WAPOR conference in Salzburg as Local Conference Chair (see here) and contributed to the successful WAPOR conference in Seoul in 2024 (see here).
Martin Weichbold is currently President of RC 33 of the International Sociological Association (see here) and will play a leading role in organizing the ISA Forum in Rabat (Morocco) in 2025 and the ISA RC33 conference in Naples.
Third-Party Funded Projects
In addition, remarkable successes have been achieved in acquiring third-party funding over the past ten years. We cooperated with the Paracelsus Medical Private University Salzburg in an extensive and generously funded pain research project (see: here). Three FFG projects have been successfully completed in recent years. Within the framework of the security focus “Protection of Critical Infrastructures,” a future scenario of migration movements based on statistical indicators was developed. Additionally, the security perceptions of Austrians were extracted based on daily media information, and the algorithms used were methodologically evaluated. In another project, current methods for measuring technology trends were analyzed and assessed for their significance using a mixed-methods design in a multidisciplinary collaboration with involved partners.
Since 2020, the department’s methods team has been more active in mixed-methods research projects, as well as in commissioned research. A highly funded collaborative project with PMU Salzburg on avatar solutions and technology readiness in healthcare was successfully completed in 2023. In addition to the mentioned projects in survey research, the methods team has also conducted several commissioned studies for the AK Salzburg and the Robert Jungk Library (see third party funded projects).
