Dennis Abel; Stefan Jünger; Jonas Lieth; Amelie Veit

GESIS — Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences

A growing interest in the social sciences in Earth observation data has led to a broad spectrum of publications in recent years. They range from studying environmental attitudes and behavior, economic development, conflicts and causes of flight, and electoral behavior. However, social science researchers also face many obstacles in applying and using these data, resulting from 1) a lack of technical expertise, 2) a lack of knowledge of data sources and how to access them, 3) unfamiliarity with complex data formats, such as high-resolution, longitudinal raster datacubes, and 4) lack of expertise in integrating the data into existing social science datasets. Despite the increased interest in the data, for the majority of researchers in the social sciences, EO data represents a black box after all. In this session, we present our “gxc” tool which aims to close the gap and create an automated interface to EO data for social science research. The project’s goal is creating an open-source tool to link time- and space-sensitive social science datasets with data from Earth observation programs based on a Shiny App in R. The project advances the automatization of these data integration processes between social science data and EO data based on an open-source and user-friendly tool. The workflow will be exemplified on the basis of a research project on the effects of flooding exposure on climate change opinion.

Petra Ahrweiler

Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz

This paper explores the potential of simulation experiments as anticipatory tools for political planning in complex domains such as research and innovation policy. It argues that modern policymaking must navigate the tension between the need for intervention and the unpredictability of outcomes. Unlike real-world political actions, which function as uncontrolled experiments within complex social systems, computer-based simulations allow for the systematic exploration of “what-if” scenarios. Central to this approach is agent-based modelling (ABM), where individual agents – such as firms, universities, and research institutions – interact within simulated environments governed by theoretical and empirical rules. These simulations generate emergent macro-level behaviors, enabling the study of cooperation, learning, and adaptation.

The paper underscores the importance of integrating sociological theory, qualitative fieldwork, and quantitative data to create realistic and policy-relevant models, termed “sociotopes.” The paper illustrates this with the SKIN model (Simulating Knowledge Dynamics in Innovation Networks), used by the European Commission to assess policy alternatives under the Seventh Framework Programme. The model revealed, for instance, that increasing SME participation significantly enhanced knowledge flows, and that the innovation network remained resilient to thematic funding shifts.

While simulations do not offer precise forecasts, they support weak prediction by highlighting trends and possible outcomes, thus aiding strategic foresight and iterative policy learning. Positioned between theory, laboratory science, and real-world application, simulation experiments provide a structured and reflexive means to anticipate and shape future developments in complex policy environments.

Sebastian Bähr¹; Matthias Collischon¹; Bernad Batinic²

¹ Institut für Arbeitsmarkt und Berufsforschung (IAB); ² JKU Linz

Especially since the COVID-19 pandemic, working from home (WFH) has become a common practice in the workplace. This raises if WFH changes non-monetary benefits of work, such as job quality or social contacts. Thus, in this article, we investigate how working from home affects Jahoda’s latent functions of employment as well as job quality measures. To this end, we use panel data from the German Panel Study Labour Market and Social Security (PASS) and estimate the effects of changing work patterns on the aforementioned outcomes. Our findings reveal basically no effects of WFH on job quality measures and latent benefits. This, in contrast to anecdotal evidence, implies that WFH does not harm psychological well-being.

Barbara Binder

GESIS — Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences

Do individuals from different socioeconomic status (SES) groups use the internet differently? Drawing on a linked dataset based on the ALLBUS 2023 survey and a supplementary web tracking dataset (ALLBUS 2023 DBD Add-On), the analysis investigates whether higher socioeconomic status (SES) is associated with greater engagement in beneficial browsing – defined as online behavior related to education, careers, business and finance.

The sample includes 104 ALLBUS respondents with approximately 320,000 tracked website visits, which were classified into content-based categories, such as “education,” “healthy living,” “personal finance,” alongside categories like “shopping,” or “video gaming”. I examine whether SES is associated with the share of time spent in beneficial browsing and if this relationship is moderated by participants’ digital affinity, e.g. their digital literacy or attitudes towards technologies and privacy.

Preliminary findings suggest that – controlling for student status – education and age are not significantly associated with beneficial internet use. Instead, subjective social status and digital literacy (measured via computer know-how) are positively related to beneficial browsing behavior. Migration background is negatively associated with productive internet use, while attitudes toward technology and privacy concerns do not show a significant relationship.

The findings underscore the importance of perceived social positioning and digital skills – rather than structural SES – in shaping who engages more in beneficial internet use. They challenge common assumptions about socioeconomic disparities in the returns from digital technology use and highlight the need for further research based on combined survey and behavioral data.

Hironobu Bito¹; Wataru Yoshida²

¹ Tokyo Metropolitan University; ² National Institute of Population and Social Security Research

Despite advancements in work-family policies (WFPs) in many countries, actual usage—particularly among men—remains limited. In Japan, this gap between policy and practice, often termed the “flexibility gap” (Chung, 2020), is especially pronounced. It is frequently attributed to strong cultural norms that define the “ideal worker” as someone always available, working long hours, and prioritizing work over family. Employees who deviate from this ideal may anticipate penalties, particularly in promotion decisions.

This study examines whether violations of the ideal worker norm affect promotion evaluations in Japanese firms. We conducted a randomized conjoint survey experiment with 2,000 respondents (1,000 HR personnel and 1,000 line managers), who evaluated fictional candidates for managerial roles. Candidate profiles were randomly varied across attributes including gender, prior use of WFPs (e.g., parental leave and reduced working hours), current working hours. We also experimentally manipulated whether the organization supported WFPs and whether one or two candidates would be promoted.

Results partially support for the presence of penalties associated with deviation from the ideal worker norm. Candidates currently working shorter hours were rated less favorably, while those working overtime were rated more positively. However, past use of WFPs had no significant effect. No differences emerged based on candidate gender, number of promotion slots, evaluator role, or organizational support for WFPs.

Exploratory analyses showed respondents who had used WFPs or were unmarried were more likely to penalize similar candidates, while those in more flexible environments were less punitive. These findings suggest internalized norms and misperceptions may sustain the flexibility gap.

Nadja Bömmel

Institute for Employment Research IAB

The reservation wage constitutes a key concept for the understanding of factors being relevant for the transition from unemployment into employment. Former literature shows that the individual assessment of the reservation wage depends on multiple factors on the individual level but can also be altered by the prevailing labor market conditions or the social security system. An important individual level factor is gender. Just like for labor market participation and wages, the literature also shows a gender gap in reservation wages. To explore the determinants of the reservation wage gap, I use decomposition methods and data from the panel survey “Lebensqualität und Teilhabe” containing information on participants of the wage subsidy program “Eingliederung von Langzeitarbeitslosen”.

Preliminary results of the Oaxaca-Blinder Decomposition indicate that a major part (over 80%) of the gender reservation wage gap can be explained by personal characteristics, characteristics of the household, children, labour market experience, attitudes toward work, job search, and characteristics of the current subsidized employment. The latter appear to be most important (with almost 69%).

Also, it shows that there is no significant correlation between the reservation wage and the probability of being employed after the wage subsidy program, whereas reporting a higher reservation wage is correlated with receiving a higher wage if employed after the program.

Blanca Luque Capellas

Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz

Water management systems can be understood as socio-ecological-technological systems, where social dimensions (such as institutions or perceptions), ecological dimensions (such as climate or water resources) and technological dimensions (such as infrastructures or software) interact. In recent years, artificial intelligence (AI) has been increasingly introduced as a tool to support actions and decision-making to respond to climate change-related droughts. Previous research states that integrating AI into socio-technical systems implies changes in decision-making processes, while the importance of collective agency and decision-making for fostering changes in socio-ecological systems has been widely discussed in sustainability science. However, there seem to be only fewer contributions dealing with the interaction of AI integration for water management, with human agency and decision-making. And even fewer contributions based on empirical data.

The PhD project presented aims to fill this gap by answering the question: How does AI integration for automated or supported decision-making interact with human agency and social decision-making in the context of climate change adaptation to droughts through water management?

The methodology applied aims to collect empirical data based on a case study, comparing water management systems within a climate change-related drought, before and after the implementation of AI technologies for surveilling citizens’ water consumption.

Hans Dietrich

Institute for Employment Research (IAB)

The current research literature indicates intergenerational transmission of disadvantaged social positions is still a key factor for the maintenance of social inequality in western societies. However, educational returns and their trend over time show more variation across countries, so that they have increased in some countries (for instance the USA; Goldin and Katz 2008), while they have declined or remained stable in others (for instance in many European countries; Muller and Gangl 2003). Mastekaasa & Birkelund (2022) favor parental education instead of paternal status, occupation or income for Sweden. However, modern states might differ with respect to the appropriateness of indictors applied identifying social origin.

We employ longitudinal household panel-data (Hilda for Australia and GSOEP for Germany) and follow up individuals from age 16 to age 30. Empirical result indicates, offspring’s status- and wage-positions seem to be less correlated in Australia compared to Germany and as models of status attainment in general assume. Compared to Germany the findings for Australia indicate a more pronounced age-dynamic concept for both social origin and offspring’s socioeconomic status, whilst in Germany a sever school tracking does not only reduce intergenerational mobility, but is also stricter regarding the turn of induvial’ live courses.

Further on, especially for Australia, we observe indications for a parental division regarding their impact on offspring’s socioeconomic status reproduction: Fathers’ income and mothers’ education and status contribute to intergenerational transmission.

Halil Duran

GESIS — Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences

According to Townsend (1979: 31) “Deprivation refers to the inability to afford a range of items and activities that are widely viewed as key conditions for participation in the society to which one belongs” (Lanau 2023: 335). In 2012, EU Member States adopted a 13-item scale to measure the material and social deprivation for the whole population on an annual basis (Guio et al. 2012: 9; 111). One key challenge regarding the measurement of deprivation is the selection of a suitable number and composition of items. Previous research has shown how measuring deprivation rates could be implemented more efficiently and with minimal information loss using adaptive testing (Bailey&Guio2022; Bailey 2020). Though the issue with adaptive testing is threefold, most importantly it does not solve the issue of updating the item list regarding social and technological transitions. This paper in contrast uses a different approach, namely classification trees (Breiman et al. 1984), using a data-driven analysis approach. The advantages of classification trees against adaptive testing for e.g. is that all the households will get the same items, the ordering of the items will be given for the questionnaire through the variable importance measure and the algorithm is easy to interprete and traceable (white box algorithm). The descriptive goal is to find out, how many items will be needed to capture similar deprivation rates as with the full set of deprivation items. Therefore I use data of the german Panel Survey of Social Security (PASS) from 2006/07 to 2018 with a set of 21 items.

Isabel Habicht¹; Eva Zschirnt²; Jessica Daikeler³

¹ Bergische Universität Wuppertal; Harvard University; ² University of Amsterdam; ³ GESIS-Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences

Discrimination against vulnerable groups remains persistent in labor markets despite anti-discrimination legislation. While prior meta-analyses have documented hiring discrimination based on gender and ethnicity, parenthood—particularly in its intersection with gender—remains an understudied factor. This study addresses this gap by conducting the first meta-analysis of experimental correspondence studies on gendered hiring discrimination against parents.

Drawing on 20 eligible studies covering 208 experimental conditions, we investigate whether parents, especially mothers, face discrimination in hiring decisions compared to childless applicants. We further explore whether discrimination varies by applicant gender, occupational characteristics, country context, and over time. The meta-analysis was preregistered on the OSF, and data were collected and coded for moderators, including study characteristics (publication year, publication type), research design (country, study period, sample size), applicant characteristics (gender, parental status, number/age of children), and occupational characteristics (sector, qualification level, gender composition).

Preliminary findings indicate a decline in parenthood discrimination in hiring over time. Subgroup analyses are planned to test whether discrimination persists by gender and across specific contexts, such as countries with weaker family-friendly policies, male-dominated occupations, or among highly qualified applicants.

This meta-analysis provides critical insights into how gender and parenthood intersect in hiring discrimination and informs debates on policy, workplace practices, and persistent structural inequalities affecting working parents.

Marc Hannappel

University of Koblenz

„Activity Space Research “(ASR) focuses on individuals’ spatial behavior across the entirety of their urban environment. Thus, ASR serves as a complementary approach to studies on residential segregation and its contextual effects. Similar to segregation research, which assumes that residential locations are unequally distributed across the urban space depending on individuals’ socio-structural characteristics, ASR is based on the premise that movement patterns and locations visited are not randomly distributed either. Rather, they reflect perception, interpretation, and behavioral patterns typically correlated with specific sociodemographic attributes. Recently, new technologies have opened up promising avenues for revitalizing ASR.

This poster will present a research design for capturing and analyzing digital activity spaces. Using a mixed-methods approach, quantitative tracking data were combined with qualitative observations in an exploratory study involving university students. A smartphone app was used to collect GPS-based movement data and identify student “hotspots.” This data was linked to individual lifestyle indicators and supplemented with qualitative observations at the locations in question. Although not representative, our findings suggest that movement profiles and spatial preferences can be described along lifestyle-related lines. Overall, the observed locations show a strong fit between lifestyle typologies and spatial practices, suggesting that activity spaces reflect deeper patterns of social differentiation.

Thomas Heinze; Rafael Josek

Bergische Universität Wuppertal

The current global situation is characterized by a fundamental tension. On the one hand, there is a tremendous amount of disinformation and information bubbles generated by social media. This development is endangering the democratically constituted communities of many developed countries. On the other hand, research and science have a very high status compared to earlier historical periods and contribute significantly to solving medical, social and economic problems. In this context, universities play an important role as actors in the modern knowledge society. They act as trustees in the production, verification, safeguarding and dissemination of knowledge.

Even though universities play an important role in modern knowledge societies, they are insufficiently researched from an analytical-empirical perspective. For example, little is known about the diversity of the internal subject structure of universities and, at an aggregated level, the diversity of entire university systems. Despite being a well-known concept both in population ecology and neo-institutional organization theory, isomorphism (or structural similarity) has been conceptualized and empirically examined by very few studies only. This paper examines organizational isomorphism in German higher education, using the Relative Specialization Index (RESP).

Drawing on a comprehensive data set that includes professorial staff, students, as well as basic and grant funding, the paper shows, first, that German public universities’ disciplinary structures have become more isomorphic in the last three decades. Second, the paper shows in an exemplary fashion how particular universities have changed their disciplinary profiles during the observation period (1995-2020).

Jessica Nuske

 Universität Bremen

In the face of intensifying societal challenges – ranging from climate change to democratic erosion – sociology is increasingly called upon not only to describe social phenomena but to inform policy and contribute to practical solutions. In response, co-produced research has gained traction as a mode of inquiry that involves academic and societal actors collaboratively across the research process. However, this shift raises fundamental epistemological and methodological questions: What constitutes valid knowledge in contexts that span multiple epistemic communities? And what forms of influence – particularly in policy – and should such research exert? This paper proposes a sociologically grounded reconceptualization of research validity in collaborative research, understood as a situated and negotiated achievement. Drawing on Science and Technology Studies, particularly the concept of boundary objects, it is argued that research quality must be assessed not only by internal consistency or rigour, but by the ability to foster epistemic collaboration across institutional and disciplinary divides. Boundary objects serve as mediators that enable cooperation without requiring consensus, thus sustaining both epistemic integrity and pluralism. The paper further advances a reflexive understanding of impact, shifting focus from instrumental outcomes to the structuring of communicative interfaces between science and society. Validity and impact, under this framework, are interdependent and processual – requiring transparency, reflexivity, and attention to the social conditions of knowledge production. This approach contributes to the methodological renewal of sociology in the face of complexity.

Kerstin Ostermann; Sebastian Bähr

Institute for Employment Research IAB

While the fundamental link between place and inequality is well investigated, causal studies on neighborhood effects are limited. Using nationwide administrative data from Germany and a quasi-experimental identification approach, we investigate how employed network ties and role models in the residential neighborhood shape individual-level employment. In exploiting variation over time, within cities and between 1 × 1 kilometer grid cells, we provide a causal estimate of gendered neighborhood employment effects on refugee women’s employment probability. Results support direct job referral effects of full-time employed female neighbors, which is most potent for other neighborhood women from refugee countries. Analyses of locally prevalent female work norms show a positive one-off effect of higher part-time employment shares of native neighbors indicating that neighbors serve as role models only before other structures are settled. In analyzing neighborhood effects by sex and nationality, our study reveals that even weak neighborhood ties can provide valuable resources for disadvantaged social groups in the labor market. Hence, the study stresses the necessity to break down dichotomies such as gender and ethnicity when not only explaining but also finding alternative pathways for circumventing combined hurdles of intersectionality.

Maximilian Schiele

IAB

This study investigates how the division of housework changes when heterosexual couples in Germany move in together. Using 1999–2017 data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP), we apply an event study design to analyze how household formation influences gender disparities in unpaid domestic labor. Our results reveal that gender inequalities in housework are already present before cohabitation, with single women performing significantly more housework than single men. However, these disparities increase markedly following the transition to shared living. The additional burden on women appears to continuously increase in the years after moving in together. While around half of the overall increase can be explained by the presence of children, a substantial share remains even after controlling for parenthood, indicating that cohabitation itself drives a significant shift in domestic labor allocation. Furthermore, we find that the effect is more pronounced among individuals with lower educational attainment. These findings support an integrated perspective: gender norms shape pre-cohabitation behaviors, while household bargaining mechanisms—amplified by differences in labor market participation and childrearing expectations—further entrench inequality.

Carina Toussaint

Institute for Employment Reserach (IAB)

Higher education dropout continues to pose significant individual and societal challenges. While prior research shows that mismatches between aspirations and study choices increase the risk of dropout, little is known about the specific role of gender-typed compromises – that is, deviations from gendered field aspirations during the transition to higher education. Drawing on Gottfredson’s theory of circumscription and compromise as well as gender role theory, this study examines how gender-conforming and gender-atypical compromises affect study persistence. Using data from the German National Educational Panel Study (NEPS SC4, N ≈ 3,000), compromises are identified by comparing the gender composition of aspired and actual study fields. Field-level characteristics are derived from NEPS SC5 and the German Microcensus. Results from entropy-balanced discrete-time event history models show that students who deviate from their gendered aspirations face an elevated dropout risk. The effect varies by gender: women are more likely to drop out after gender-atypical compromises, while men are more vulnerable after gender-conforming compromises. These findings highlight how conformity to gender norms during educational transitions shapes persistence in higher education.

Yevhen Voronin

University of Wuppertal

Contemporary research on the social side of cultural taste highlights a notable trend of cultural omnivorous taste among socially privileged groups. However, social stratification of taste encompasses different cultural domains, such as music, film or literature. But are omnivores in music also more likely to be omnivores in film and literary taste, and otherwise? Motivated to contribute to the debates on comparability in omnivore studies, this study tests the assumption of overlap of the omnivorous taste, using the KuBiPaD I survey data from Germany. Employing latent profile analysis, this study offers empirical insights revealing a partial overlap. The results show that it is common for omnivores in one domain to be omnivores as well as paucivores in other domains. The co-occurrence of omnivorousness in one domain and univorousness in another one is rare. When comparing the social stratification of omnivorous classes, three domains demonstrate dissimilarities. In the end, the overlap hypothesis is only partially supported, which encourages future research to select cultural domains to study omnivorousness more thoughtfully.

Maximilian Weber

Uni Mainz

In November 2022, the release of ChatGPT and other large language models (LLMs) marked a new era in the widespread use of artificial intelligence and natural language processing applications. This study explores how the discourse surrounding LLMs evolved following the release of ChatGPT, which became a topic of discussion in both traditional and social media. While some individuals lauded the benefits of LLMs, others raised concerns about potential negative impacts, such as spreading false information, perpetuating biases, affecting the job market, and compromising privacy. This study investigates how traditional media discussions evolved after the launch of LLMs to a wider public and whether different news outlets addressed the associated risks of LLM adoption in distinctive ways. Using a dataset of over 13,000 articles and 42,000 paragraphs from major newspapers in Germany, the UK, and the US, this research explores trends and thematic shifts in media coverage. A classification approach leveraging the open-weight Llama model was employed to identify discussions of risks and harms, while BERTopic was used for topic modeling to uncover prevalent themes. The findings show a sharp increase in AI-related discussions following ChatGPT’s release, with peaks in early 2023. Liberal-leaning outlets, such as The Guardian, were more critical on average than conservative ones, like The Times. Distinct themes of AI-related risks were identified, including misinformation, job displacement, privacy concerns, and ethical challenges.

Nils Witte¹; Rosa Weber²

¹ Bundesinstitut für Bevölkerungsforschung; ² Stockholm University

Economic labor market theories are ambiguous when it comes to the returns to return migration. Migrants’ home country labor markets could either pay a premium on the human capital acquired through stays abroad or they could punish the lack of home country work experience. To what extent is the answer conditioned by migrants’ gender? We contribute to the literature on labor market outcomes of return migrants in various ways. First, we examine return migrants to Germany, representing high-income countries which are seldom studied as countries of emigration let alone as countries of return migration. Second, we ask whether the returns to returning vary by gender. Meanwhile, we consider gender differences in labor market participation. Third, we examine gender differences in several potential outcomes including the likelihood of employment, the intensity of employment, salary, and occupational status. We draw on data from the German Emigration and Remigration Panel Study (GERPS) for return migrants and use the Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) as reference for non-migrants. We use multivariate analysis methods and entropy balancing to identify the effect of return migration on labor market outcomes. Preliminary findings indicate that the average employment rate of return migrants is similar to non-migrants unless they are women. Among those employed after return, wages and working hours are higher than among non-migrants and the difference is higher among men than women. Finally, the occupational prestige of return migrants is marginally lower than among non-migrants and there are no gender differences.