Projects in the area of methods research:
For over 20 years, members of the Department of Sociology have been researching and publishing on methods of empirical social research. During this time, more than 60 works (books, journal articles, book chapters) have been produced. The methodology team of the Department of Sociology is currently intensively involved in Austrian and cross-national survey research and takes part in several survey programs and research projects. Numerous survey projects have been carried out and completed independently in recent years. Furthermore, the department’s methodology team conducts basic methodological research and contributes to the department’s strong international visibility through innovative approaches and strong activities in the field of global networking.
1. Integration into the survey research infrastructure
a) Participation in the Social Survey of Austria (SSÖ)
Contact: Wolfgang Aschauer
The SSÖ is conducted in Austria every two years in conjunction with the modules of the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP). It is a nationwide representative survey funded by the Federal Ministry of Education, Science, and Research as part of the research infrastructure (bmbwf.gv.at). Funding for the SSÖ/ISSP is secured until 2026. This survey is conducted in cooperation with the sociology departments for methods and empirical social research of several Austrian universities (led by the University of Graz in cooperation with the University of Linz) and collects data on central political and social values and attitudes of Austrians every two years. Further information on the SSÖ can be found here.
b) Participation in the Austrian Social Science Data Archive (AUSSDA)
Contact: Martin Weichbold
As of 2025, the University of Salzburg (represented by Martin Weichbold) has officially become a member of AUSSDA. The Austrian Social Science Data Archive (AUSSDA) is the national research data centre for social sciences in Austria. It is run as an infrastructure facility by a consortium consisting of several Austrian universities and the Institute for Advanced Studies (IHS) in Vienna. AUSSDA serves as a central hub for the processing, archiving and provision of social science research data. The aim is to promote the transparency, reproducibility and reuse of scientific work. AUSSDA sets new standards in the field of data management and data backup and also contributes to international networking in the social sciences, particularly through its membership of the Consortium of European Social Science Data Archives (CESSDA).
c) Participation in Preparatory Work for ASEP
Contact: Wolfgang Aschauer, Christopher Etter
The Austrian Socio-Economic Panel (ASEP) is currently being coordinated in Austria by Statistics Austria. It is a large-scale household survey that will enable longitudinal analyses and thus insights into processes of social change in Austria in the future.
Through ASEP, a representative long-term survey of households will be implemented and a link with administrative data will also be possible.
The Austrian Socio-Economic Panel (ASEP) is funded by the Federal Ministry of Education, Science, and Research and conducted by Statistics Austria, responsible for project management, survey design, data collection, and quality assurance. Wolfgang Aschauer and Christopher Etter are members of the scientific advisory board and are involved in the conception of questions on social and political attitudes.
2. Completed projects in survey research:
d) Initiation and Implementation of the VIC-Study 2020 – 2022
Contact: Wolfgang Aschauer
At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020, the World Value Survey Association launched the “Values in Crisis” study (VIC). The project involves a large-scale global study examining how political and social attitudes are fundamentally shaken by the Corona pandemic and whether profound processes of value change can be observed as a result of the crisis. The first survey, now completed, involved 15 countries. The methodology team at the University of Salzburg took over the archiving of the cross-national dataset, which is available here in open access format.
Two further waves of surveys were conducted in a longitudinal design and funded through HRSM structural funds. Thus, data from three waves in 2020, 2021, and 2022 are available for Austria here.
As part of the projects on the pandemic’s impact, two edited volumes were also published Open Access:
Aschauer, W.; Glatz, C. & Prandner, D. (2022) (Hrsg.). Die österreichische Gesellschaft während der Corona-Pandemie. Ergebnisse aus sozialwissenschaftlichen Umfragen. Wiesbaden: Springer-VS. doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-34491-7
Aschauer, W., Eder, A. & Prandner, D. (Hrsg.). (2024). Die Auswirkungen der Corona-Pandemie auf die österreichische Gesellschaft. Ergebnisse der Längsschnittstudie „Werte in der Krise 2020-2022“. Baden-Baden: NOMOS, doi.org/10.5771/9783748942696
e) Participation in the Digitize Project of the University of Vienna
Contact: Wolfgang Aschauer
As part of the “Digitize” project, a wave of the SSÖ survey was also funded. In addition, the Department of Sociology was involved in a work package for the development of the online panel, where several survey waves have already been conducted: https://digitize.univie.ac.at/en/who-we-are/
3. Innovative methodological approaches f) Research on Data Quality in Surveys
Contact: Martin Weichbold
Looking back at the methodological research conducted at the department over recent years, most of the work focuses on central questions in the area of data construction. Data collection in surveys is understood as a complex process that is susceptible to biases in several phases (e.g., in sampling, measurement errors and data interpretation). Through this holistic approach, data quality has to be analysed comprehensively, and essential fragments of a theory of surveys are to be developed (see, e.g., the monograph by Reinhard Bachleitner, Martin Weichbold, and Wolfgang Aschauer here: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-531-92327-7).
g) Research on Challenges in Cultural and Cross-National Comparisons
Contact: Wolfgang Aschauer
Another focus of the Department of Sociology is addressing fundamental methodological challenges in cross-national and intercultural comparisons. Content validity in cultural comparison can only be achieved if the theoretical concepts are measured functionally equivalent across all cultures. The efforts have also resulted in an extensive monograph that currently represents a German-language standard work on the equivalence problem in surveys: see here.
Current research activities in the context of intercultural survey research concern, for example, the comparability of concepts in specific research topics (e.g., Well-being, see here): see here.
h) Social Doc
Contact: Kornelia Hahn, Holger Faby
This is a documentary series on empirical projects investigating the geographies of clothing culture. Our research applies a cultural geography approach in three different ways: (1) we focus on the circulation of clothes by exploring extended supply chains; (2) we investigate the embodied practices and meaning-making of consumers in first and second hand shops and home closets, where individuals store and ‘curate’ their wardrobes; (3) we generate visual and audio data by walking around with consumers/participants (rhythm analysis) and encouraging them to ‘speak out loud’. The results of this research show that in retail settings consumers are less ‘seduced’ by novelty, brands or choice, but are more ‘necessarily’ engaged in establishing spatial, temporal and material orders – a less attractive demand than is generally assumed.
4. International networking:
i) Strengthening Methodological and Survey Research in the Global South
In general, Martin Weichbold and Wolfgang Aschauer are currently very active in global methodological activities and survey research and participate in initiatives to strengthen survey research in the Global South. Wolfgang Aschauer is a member of the Global Center of Spatial Methods and Urban Sustainability. At the SMUS conference in Botswana, Wolfgang Aschauer was active as a keynote speaker. He was active as a method trainer at the SMUS conference in Roorkee, India, and as a session organizer at the conference in Thailand in 2024 as a session organizer. Wolfgang Aschauer is currently involved in the leadership committees of WAPOR (World Association of Public Opinion Research) as Chair of the Conference Committee, and in 2023, he organized the WAPOR conference in Salzburg as Local Conference Chair and contributed to the successful WAPOR conference in Seoul in 2024.
Martin Weichbold is currently President of RC33 of the International Sociological Association (ISA) and will play a leading role in organizing the ISA Forum in Rabat (Morocco) in 2025 and the ISA RC33 conference in Naples.
5. Third-Party Funded Projects
In addition, remarkable successes have been achieved in acquiring third-party funding over the past ten years. We cooperated with the Paracelsus Medical Private University Salzburg (PMU) in an extensive and generously funded pain research project (see here). Three FFG projects have been successfully completed in recent years. A future scenario of migration movements based on statistical indicators was developed as part of the security focus “Critical Infrastructure Protection”. Additionally, the security perceptions of Austrians were extracted based on daily media information, and the algorithms used were methodologically evaluated. In another project, current methods for measuring technology trends were analysed and assessed for their significance using a mixed-methods design in a multidisciplinary collaboration with involved partners.
Since 2020, the department’s methods team has been more active in mixed-methods research projects, as well as in commissioned research. A highly funded collaborative project with PMU Salzburg on avatar solutions and technology readiness in healthcare was successfully completed in 2023 (see here). In addition to the mentioned projects in survey research, the methods team has also conducted several commissioned studies for the AK Salzburg (ARLEJUM, FAKUSA) and the Robert Jungk Library (Authoritarianism study).
