The Academy of Sociology is a professional scientific association promoting analytical-empirical social science. The 4th Conference of the Academy of Sociology is hosted by the Institute of Educational Science and the Institute of Sociology at the University of Bern. The theme of the conference, which will take place in Bern/Switzerland on August 28-30, 2023, is "Knowledge Societies". In addition to relevant submissions on the conference theme, proposals on other topics of analytical-empirical research are also highly welcome (Open Sessions). Conference language is English. The detailed call for papers and submission guidelines are available here. The deadline for applications is 15.04.2023.
The GESIS Spring Seminar offers high-quality training in state-of-the-art techniques in quantitative data analysis taught by leading experts in the field. It is designed for advanced graduate or PhD students, post-docs, and junior as well as senior researchers. Extensive hands-on exercises and tutorials complement lectures in each course. All courses are held in English.The Spring Seminar will take place from 27 February to 17 March 2023 on-site in Cologne. In 2023, all courses will deal with how to model group differences in the social sciences and beyond: Week 1 (27 Feb-03 Mar): Comparative Social Research with Multi-Group SEM, Daniel Seddig, Eldad Davidov, Peter Schmidt, & Yannick Diehl. Week 2 (06-10 Mar): Decomposition Methods in the Social Sciences, Johannes Giesecke & Ben Jann. Week 3 (13-17 Mar): Latent Class Analysis, Daniel Oberski. For detailed course descriptions and to register for the courses, you can click here.
Researchers and scholars around the world have produced a sizable body of literature focusing on the composition and appraisal of qualitative research reports such as articles and dissertations. Although there is no definitive consensus on what constitutes a singular set of “best practices” for producing and evaluating qualitative research writing, To help faculty members, students, editors, reviewers, authors, researchers, research synthesizers, grant writers, and grant panels become more familiar with the quality literature TQR (The Qualitative Report) presents a collection of web resources, articles, chapters, and books in the TQR Community Qualitative Research Resource Series, reflect, prescriptions authors present when it comes to conducting and evaluating qualitative research inquiries and composing and appraising qualitative research reports.
The Institut für Qualitative Forschung regularly offers workshops on qualitative social research. The workshops are aimed at anyone who works with or is interested in methods of qualitative research. The workshops offer insights into various methods and give suggestions for your own research practice. You can find more information here.
Magdeburger Methodenworkshop
The ZSM, Zentrum für Sozialweltforschung und Methodenentwicklung, will host a method workshop on qualitative educational and social research at the Otto von Guericke University in Magdeburg on May 5th and 6th, 2023 for the 26th time. The workshop offers scientists a forum in 20 different working groups, in which they can work on their own or third-party data material from current projects under professionally competent guidance, based on the model of research workshops. In addition to the intensive work on the material, both methodological questions as well as the practical problems of everyday research are at the center of the joint workshop work. You can find more information here.
This workshop provides a practical introduction to the experiential, qualitative approach-interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA). The aim is that, by the end of the class, attendees will recognise the important principles of the approach and understand the main practical steps involved in a research project using IPA. The workshop will begin with a short example of a study conducted by Jonathan Smith. According to Jonathan, the best way to get to grips with the value of an approach is to see what it can produce. This will be followed by a brief presentation of the theoretical underpinnings of IPA. Most of the workshop will be taken up with Jonathan guiding participants through the stages of conducting an IPA study: design, data collection, analysis, writing up. Jonathan A Smith is Professor of Psychology at Birkbeck University of London UK. He has developed Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) as one particular experiential qualitative methodology in psychology and employed it in a wide range of areas, particularly in health. The workshop will take place on February 10th, 2023 5 pm - 11 pm CET and you can register for the workshop here.
On Methodspace, research design is the focus for the first quarter of 2023. In this research conversation on YouTube, Pengfei Zhao, Karen Ross, Peiwei Li and Barbara Dennis discuss foundational ideas from their book, Making Sense of Social Research Methodology. Instead of discrete steps and sets of protocols associated with research design, the co-authors explain why they use the metaphor of a tree to describe inquiry as well-rooted, and growing. They make a case for viewing research as social action. Zhao, Ross, Li and Dennis also discuss the need for self-awareness about our identities as researchers. You can have a look here.