Ongoing Research Training Projects

During the coronavirus pandemic, social differences in access to information and communication technologies, their use and corresponding skills as well as their effects (“digital divide”) became particularly clear. Homeschooling and digital teaching make school education dependent on technical equipment and how it is used, which is likely to exacerbate social disparities. Educational content at universities and in the vocational training system is also increasingly being taught using digital media. In the world of work, there are differences in the opportunities for digital working from home between professions and economic sectors, but also between social groups with different resources.

Against this background of recently highlighted differences, the teaching research project is concerned with a theory-based, empirical investigation of interactions between digital skills and resources, other skills or formal educational experiences and individual living conditions. A central question is the extent to which unequal digital skills are not only a result of conventional inequalities, but also act as an influencing factor on existing social inequalities. Among other things, we are interested in the extent to which different types of resources and risks accumulate in connection with digitization processes and whether there are possibilities for mutual compensation.

Duration: WS 2024/25 - WS 2025/26, Head: Prof. Steffen Hillmert

The term “orientation towards the common good” has recently attracted a great deal of attention in the public debate: On the one hand, there are numerous appeals, especially from politicians, to strengthen the common good orientation in order to be able to achieve certain goals (e.g. better health protection in corona times). On the other hand, many see the orientation towards the common good under threat, for example from populist politics or the consequences of globalization. However, it is unclear what is actually meant by “orientation towards the common good”, and even more so how it arises and what consequences it can have for social life.

The LFP explores these questions both theoretically and empirically. In the first part of the seminar, various concepts and views will be discussed that include different dimensions of the orientation towards the common good and see it as being located at different levels of social life. In addition, the determinants of the orientation towards the common good and possible consequences for social life will be discussed.  

The theoretical debate is followed by the design and implementation of an empirical study. A nationwide online survey (n=1000 respondents) will be used to investigate specific questions developed in the seminar for the topics addressed.

Duration: WS 2023/24 - WS 2024/25, Supervision: Prof. Martin Groß

In October 2023, a group of students led by the deputy head of the institute began a research project to investigate the coexistence of refugees and non-refugees in Tübingen and the surrounding area.
In the winter semester 2023/2024, the team developed a thematic approach and overview before finally defining fields of interest and establishing initial field access. In three small groups, the team dealt with the areas of living, work and leisure (especially sport) and reached out to organizations, companies and clubs. The small groups spent large parts of the winter and following summer semester in their fields and exchanged their experiences at the institute. This very practical part of the project not only included several hours of fieldwork in the form of neighborhood walks, training visits, job shadowing and numerous interviews with various people in the field, but also the consolidation of scientific work steps and methods such as coding in MaxQDA, recording and continuing memos and lively exchange in meetings.
The highlight of the summer semester was the retreat, for which the student team and Dr. Nieswand moved their collaboration to the Black Forest for a weekend to examine the resulting material for phenomena and research questions. The students then returned to their fields with new ideas and collected further data on the concepts they had developed until the current winter semester. 
Currently (WS 24/25), the teaching research project is in the final stages of coding and analysis before the writing process begins in the new year. At the end of the project, a report on the local research and its findings on moral concepts for the coexistence of refugees and non-refugees in housing, work and sport will be produced.

Duration: WS 2023 - WS 2024, Supervision: Prof. Boris Nieswand

The teaching research project (LFP) aims to critically discuss different variants of the empirical operationalization of social gender with survey instruments that go beyond binary gender categories and to compare them with common sociological conceptualizations of gender. Building on this, we further develop existing questionnaire instruments and test them using various pretest methods. In a next step, we propose the inclusion of these newly developed measures in both smaller survey studies and representative German panel studies. In the third part of the LFP, we analyze data from a psychological couple study in which we have included the new measures of categorical and graded gender identity and gender performance. Compared to the previous literature, the new measurement instruments allow us to analyze the relevance of gender for relationship satisfaction in a more differentiated way.

Duration: WS 2022/23 - WS 2023/24, Head: Prof. Dr. Pia Schober

The teaching research project, which is designed for 3 semesters, is aimed at Master's students. In this round, the overall topic of the project is “Diversity and the digitalization of citizen services.” The aim is to use qualitative-interpretative empirical social research to investigate whether and how questions of diversity in society are becoming a topic in the current processes of digitization of exchange relationships between municipalities and their citizens and how they are being implemented in concrete measures. Ways of thematizing diversity and its actors are just as interesting here as the course of the relevant negotiation processes. The surrounding municipalities and cities are suitable empirical fields.
The state of the relevant research and the details of the research design will be worked out by the group in the first semester, in which the field access will also be established.  The majority of the empirical and analytical work is then carried out in the following semesters, in which the teaching research project takes 4 semester hours each. At the end of the project, the research team produces a final report.

WS 22/23 - WS 23/24, Supervision: Prof. Jörg Strübing

Modern science has close ties to the public. It has become clear, not least during the coronavirus crisis, that debates and decisions in societies today are shaped to a considerable extent by science. Scientific ways of thinking and reasoning have also become highly valued in everyday life, and institutionalized science is usually met with a high degree of trust. However, movements such as the so-called “lateral thinkers” show that there is also considerable skepticism among the public, which goes far beyond criticism of specific findings. Against this background, the teaching research project deals with the question of how scientific action, individual scientists and science as an institution appear in social perception, how these perceptions differ among different groups of people and how they change over time.

Duration: WS 2021/22 to WS 2022/23, Head: Prof. Dr. Steffen Hillmert

The starting point for this teaching research project is the observation that there is now widespread social agreement that discrimination against people on the basis of ascribed characteristics such as skin color, gender, sexual orientation, religion, disability or age is unacceptable and condemnable behavior. Nevertheless, in everyday practice it often remains controversial to what extent a specific behavior constitutes discrimination or on the basis of which social affiliation a person has been disadvantaged. This is particularly the case when discrimination is not clearly justified with reference to a personal characteristic. At the heart of educational research is the question of the subjective perception of experiences of discrimination and the necessary performance of participants: To which characteristics are disadvantages attributed by those affected and why? How do those affected plausibilize their impression that they were treated unfairly due to their ethnic origin, gender or another attributed characteristic?

Duration: WS 2021/22 to WS 2022/23; Supervision: Prof. Dr. Marion Müller and Dr. Sebastian Moser

The teaching research project (headed by Prof. Martin Groß) examines how structural change threatens social identities and how such threats affect populist attitudes. In this second part of the three-semester project, questions for empirical sub-projects are developed and the methodological tools for these sub-projects are selected.

Duration WS 2020 to WS 2021, Supervision: Prof. Dr. Martin Groß

The ethnographic teaching research project “Diversity and Migration in the City. 5 Years After” (Director: Prof. Boris Nieswand) will build on the work from the previous semester to analyze data and further develop research strategies. As part of a sociology of refugee migration, various topics will be explored, including the perspective of female refugees, the figure of the broker, forms of housing, political activism and a sociology of the relationship between volunteers and refugees. At the end of the semester, there should be a viable selection of topics that can be used to structure the teaching research report.

Duration WS 2020 to WS 2021, Supervision: Prof. Dr. Boris Nieswand

A meritocratic education system is regarded as the institutional core of a meritocratic society, but at the same time there are significant social inequalities in education. To what extent are such inequalities perceived as fair or unfair? And what measures against them are considered legitimate? The three-semester teaching research project dealt with attitudes to justice and their significance in the context of education and higher education. Initially, general perceptions of justice were examined on the basis of secondary data. A primary survey was then used to analyze the perceived legitimacy of meritocratic admissions procedures at universities and possible equality measures in the form of a quasi-experimental vignette study. The results show that respondents tend to consider traditional dimensions of social educational inequality in the direction of a desired compensation. There are thus indications of a certain legitimacy of measures in the sense of affirmative action in university admissions.

Duration WS 2019 to WS 2020, headed by Prof. Dr. Steffen Hillmert and Silvia Kopecny, M.A.

The project (led by Prof. Dr. Jörg Strübing) approaches the question of the practical relationships in which algorithms, people, technical devices and places are entangled. Based on the observation that advanced algorithmized systems such as robots, 'autonomous' vehicles or internet-based search algorithms are increasingly conceived and addressed as self-learning, the project examines practices of developing self-learning algorithms in the research field of “machine learning”. How do researchers and practitioners address algorithmic systems in their specific fields of practice? What understanding of learning is hidden behind the label of machine learning and who is really learning? How is 'agency' distributed between the entities involved and what forms of interactivity can be identified? Heavily affected by the pandemic-related lockdown, the originally ethnographic project gained initial access to the topic primarily through guided interviews and a few observations in research laboratories. (Final report in progress, as of March 2021)

Duration WS 2019/20 to WS 202/21

The distinction between people with and without disabilities is a central feature of the organization of sporting competitions. In no other social system are people with disabilities still so clearly excluded as in sport. Furthermore, this distinction and the competitive segregation based on it is also perceived as completely legitimate by most people (involved). From the perspective of the sociology of disability, however, a whole series of questions arise, e.g. why this segregation has only existed for a relatively short time and how people with disabilities were previously included in sport. Since when has this categorical distinction actually existed and how exactly is it determined in sport how severely someone is physically impaired? The aim of the teaching research is firstly to provide an introduction to the sociology of disability and the particular significance of this category in the context of sport. First, a theoretical framework and an initial question will be developed, on the basis of which an empirical analysis in the field of disability sports can then take place.

Duration WS 2018 to WS 2019

The starting point for this teaching research project is Luhmann's thesis of “legitimation through procedure”, according to which the involvement of all participants in the specific construction of reality in court ensures that court decisions are usually accepted. However, this acceptance of formal procedures does not seem to work in all conflict constellations. For example, family court decisions are increasingly less accepted and fathers who are ordered to pay maintenance see themselves as victims of the allegedly “anti-male maintenance law” or courts infiltrated by “feminists”. On the one hand, this is probably due to the fact that they are unable to establish their own procedural reality, as their role in court cannot be separated from other more general role expectations (e.g. of the father). Furthermore, conflict isolation is not successful, as the whole person is addressed via gender affiliation. Something very similar seems to happen in criminal proceedings (e.g. rape), where it is suddenly no longer just about the specific criminal case, but about a more general line of conflict between women and men. Court decisions made under these conditions (e.g. acquittals) are questioned, are not considered legitimate and can even lead to an intensification of the conflict (e.g. polarization after the Kachelmann trial).As part of the teaching research, these processes of failing to obtain legitimacy will be examined using ethnographic analyses of family law and/or criminal law proceedings as well as guided interviews with the actors concerned (separated mothers and fathers who have gone through family court proceedings).

Duration WS 2016 to WS 2017

Publication:

Müller, Marion 2020: No legitimation through family court proceedings? Acceptance problems of court decisions and the construction of gender-differentiated parenthood. In: Heck, Justus; Itschert, Adrian; Tratschin, Luca (eds.): Legitimation through proceedings. Reception, criticism and connections. Special issue of ZS Soziale Systeme VOl. 22: 21-60.

Presentation of the results in the conference report “Legitimation durch Verfahren. Reception, criticism and connections” on February 15-16, 2018 in Lucerne

The project, led by Prof. Dr. Jörg Strübing, follows on from the previous project on practices and discourses of self-measurement and uses the follow-up questions developed there to develop a research design within the thematic framework of what is today referred to in the broadest sense as Digital Humanities: The increasingly seamless convergence of everyday life practices with digital data infrastructures and the technologies networked with them. In particular, the project focuses on the question of the dissemination and use of body-related measurement data generated in self-measurement practices. In terms of methodology and social theory, the study is situated in the field of pragmatist praxeology and discourse analysis.

Duration WS 2014 to WS 2015

Publications:

Leckert, Max; Panzitta, Susanne; Atanisev, Kaan; Dawgiert, Lukas; Dieterich, Manuel; Lauterwasser, Thomas; Leger, Matthias; Orlowski, Alexander; Steidle, Sebastian; Tiede, Maria 2016: Measuring and sharing. Practices and discourses of sharing digital self-measurement data. Project report, Tübingen: University of Tübingen

Leger, Matthias; Panzitta, Susanne; Tiede, Maria, 2018: Data sharing. Digital self-measurement from a praxeological perspective, in: Houben, D.; Prietl, B. (eds.): Datengesellschaft. Insights into the datafication of the social, Bielefeld: Transcript, 35-58

A qualitative-empirical study (Director: Prof. Dr. Jörg Strübing) on the connection between discourses on self-optimization and self-care and the practices of so-called self-measurers, who use technical media and sensors to digitally generate quantitative data on their own body conditions, e.g. in the areas of sport, nutrition and general well-being, and use this data for self-experiments, among other things. The study takes a pragamtistic and praxeological approach and works with guided interviews, artifact analyses, participant observation, autoethnographies and qualitative media content analyses.

Duration SoSe 2013 - SoSe 2014

Publications:

Staiger, Lisa; Kasper, Beate; Urbanczyk, Maja; Flischikowski, Christin; Ehlert, Pia; Gerloch, Tanja; Hammerl, Annika; Klaiber, Markus; Klose, Merle; Schleifer, Tobias; Wurst, Myriam 2015: Das vermessene Selbst : Praktiken und Diskurse digitaler Selbstvermessung; Lehrforschungsprojekt 2013/14, Tübingen: Tübingen University Library

Kasper, Beate; Staiger, Lisa; Urbanczyk, Maja, 2016: Practices and discourses of digital self-measurement. In: (ed.): Challenges in Qualitative Social Research. Research strategies by students for students, in: Wintzer, J. (ed.): Herausforderungen in der Qualitativen Sozialforschung. Research strategies by students for students, Berlin: Springer 89-97

Strübing, Jörg; Kasper, Beate; Staiger, Lisa, 2016: The self of self-measurement. Fiction or calculation? A pragmatist view, in: Duttweiler, S.; Gugutzer, R.; Passoth, J.-H.; Strübing, J. (eds.): Life by numbers. Self-tracking as an optimization project?, Bielefeld: Transcript, 271-291

Ders, 2021 (forthcoming): Selbstvermessung als Subjektivierungsweise, in: Alkemeyer, T.; Brümmer, K.; Janetzko, A. (eds.): Kultursoziologie des Sports, Baden-Baden: Nomos Verlag, 231-247

Duttweiler, Stefanie; Gugutzer, Robert; Passoth, Jan-Hendrik; Strübing, Jörg (eds.): 2016: Life by numbers. Self-tracking as an optimization project?, Bielefeld: Transcript (Digital Society Vol. 10

From the summer semester of 2008 to the summer semester of 2009, a research internship on the topic of “life courses” took place at the Institute of Sociology at the University of Tübingen under the direction of Prof. Steffen Hillmert and Volker Lang. In addition to secondary analyses of existing data, a primary survey was carried out in the form of a life course study of Tübingen sociology graduates from 1997 to 2007. We would like to take this opportunity to thank our numerous interview partners once again for their cooperation.

During the three semesters, the students went through all the steps of an empirical study: Finding topics, questions and theories, drafting project outlines, constructing a standardized questionnaire, instrument testing in pretests, conducting the survey in the form of computer-assisted telephone interviews (CATI), processing and evaluating the collected data against the background of specific questions, multivariate statistical evaluations with the analysis software STATA and finally writing a detailed research report (now in our institute library!). In addition, selected research results were presented to a wider audience at two colloquia. Much of the work during the research internship took place in groups, each dedicated to a specific topic. These included the topics of “returns to education”, “training adequacy”, “working hours” and “family formation”.

Despite all the diversity, the life paths of the graduates - both professionally and privately - reveal astonishing similarities. And even if this was not an evaluation study, we now know the career paths of our graduates a little better. The results of the research internship will therefore also be useful for the future development of our institute.

In the winter semester of 2007/08 and the summer semester of 2008, a project group of students from the Institute, led by Prof. Dr. Jörg Strübing, carried out an empirical study on the social processes involved in building in building communities using the example of the Mühlenviertel in Tübingen. The aim was to reconstruct how the often heterogeneous groups of builders negotiate the final design of the joint building among themselves, but also in contact with architects, planners and craftsmen. Given the variety of design options, the diversity of aesthetic and functional demands on the building and the unequal distribution of design knowledge, how can it be possible to create a building that is unambiguous in its materiality and in which all participants find their design demands and usage requirements adequately represented?

To this end, building cooperatives were accompanied for several months, their members and the professionals involved (architects, planners) were interviewed and planning meetings were observed.

The result is an impressive report that documents the diversity of the process variants and the importance of such different dimensions as cost structure, co-ownership shares or information behavior and puts them in relation to each other.