300290 Method Class quantitativ: Contextual Effects in Individual Behaviour (S) (SoSe 2022)

Understanding the behavior of individuals, groups, and organization often requires contextual information. For instance, individuals are nested in families, households in neighborhoods, and political parties in electoral systems. Characteristics of these contexts provide opportunity structures, constraints, and resources for individual behavior and identifying contextual effects empirically is a frequent objective of applied research. Cross-national survey data represent a popular form of contextual research design that focuses on differences between nation states, such as welfare regimes, political institution, and political culture. Similarly, a large body of studies focuses on differences between neighborhoods and regional units.

The methods class provides an applied introduction to contextual analyses of individual behavior, discussing alternative research designs, challenges of collecting and merging data, and appropriate regression models for clustered data. We will use available survey data to practice the conceptual insights. Also, we will address specific problem participants encountered in the individual research projects.

The methods class is scheduled as a weekly online-seminar in the second half of the semester, starting on December 2nd. We may switch to on-site seminars at Bielefeld University in singles cases or regularly if participants prefer to do so.