Methods Center

The Methods Center is a newly founded institute at the Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences at the Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen. Its objective is to will support a broad methodological discourse and essentially fulfill four functions:

The Methods Center supports basic methodological research (methods development). It is engaged in interdisciplinary cooperation and exchange in this field. It is intended to be a platform for quantitative and qualitative method research, as well as theoretical method reflection. Part of this task is to create an interdisciplinary, multi-methodical discourse in which the potentials and limitations of the approaches are discussed.

The Methods Center provides methodological expertise, e.g. advice during the planning and evaluation of empirical studies. The advisory function adresses individual grants programmes (e.g. DFG, BMBF projects/grants) and extends to the planning and implementation of large-scale research projects. The breadth of its methodological expertise offers a variety of ways to integrate the Methods Center.

The Methods Center acts as a bridge between research structures at the University of Tübingen (and beyond). This includes particularly the integration into research projects that require method development in the social and behavioral sciences.

A list of current and completed research projects can be found here.

The Methods Center is advancing the development of interdisciplinary methodological teaching. It organizes Fall/Winter schools, spring/summer schools, block seminars, workshops, lecture series etc. A broad offer of online courses on methodical topics will be created. Online courses are particularly well suited for dealing with methodological topics.

Furthermore, in 2020 the interdiscipinary and international master "Quantitative Data Science Methods Psychometrics, Econometrics and Machine Learning" was founded which teaches students methods from different areas. The according and further lectures can be found here.