Mission statement

The goal of the Forum of Social Sciences - as part of the Department of Methods in Social Sciences - is to promote the methodical and methodological exchange of experiences and the development of a training program in advanced methodical field of application. Therefore the Forum of Social Sciences organizes conferences and methods forums. The forum addresses all members of the faculty who work empirically and want to benefit from the synergies of the methods discourse.

The Forum of Social Sciences represents a multiple definition of methods which encompasses both classical survey techniques, content analysis and experiments and qualitative techniques as depth interviews, reconstructive and biographic techniques and semiotic approaches. The aim is on the one hand to optimize single methods and on the other hand to provide solutions for methodical problems.

Goals of the Forum of Social Sciences:
• Centralization of expertise
• Use of international networking
• Development and redevelopment of methods
• Establishing expertise with the faculty

Field of activities:
• Organisation of conferences
• Workshops about methods
• Methods-WiKi
• Basic research for the evaluation of methods

Current focus:
• Online research
• connection of qualitative and quantitative techniques
• network analysis
• physiological methods
• international comparative research
• evaluation research

The current focus of the Forum of Social Sciences is related to conferences and workshops offered.