On the topic of “Conceptualizing, Measuring, and Explaining Cultural Preferences,” Dave Balzer has submitted his doctoral dissertation to Faculty 02 Social Sciences, Media and Sports at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU Mainz).

In his dissertation, he examines how individual preferences for artistic genres and cultural products develop at the intersection of genetic dispositions, family and school socialization processes, further stages of the life course, and social inequalities. For this purpose, he draws on data from the TwinLife panel and from the study “Cultural Education and Cultural Participation in Germany” (KuBiPaD), based at JGU Mainz, which he helped shape first as a research assistant and later as a research associate.

A particular strength of the dissertation is its consistently causal-analytical approach, as well as the prominent role given to experimental approaches to measuring cultural preferences. The dissertation was awarded the highest possible grade, “summa cum laude,” in all three reviews (Prof. Dr. Gunnar Otte, JGU Mainz; Prof. Dr. Mark Lutter, University of Wuppertal; Prof. Dr. Natascha Nisic, JGU Mainz). Dave Balzer also confirmed this outstanding achievement in his oral doctoral examination.

Congratulations!

In sociology and related disciplines, classic methodological questions continually arise anew in light of theoretical discussions, methodological innovations, and new data sources: How can social phenomena be explained? How can causality be conceptualized, and how can valid causal inferences be drawn? How can history, culture, and meaning be incorporated into explanations? What is the relationship between explanation, description, understanding, and prediction? What opportunities and challenges do digital behavioral data and computational methods present for sociology as an explanatory science?

Special Issue 66 of the Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie, edited by Gunnar Otte together with Natascha Nisic, Nico Sonntag, Heinz Leitgöb, and Werner Raub, explores these kinds of questions. Spanning 22 chapters, it aims to advance the dialogue between research methodology on the one hand and theory-building and empirical research on the other by bringing together foundational and applied contributions.

Contributions from the Institute of Sociology at the University of Mainz:

Nico Sonntag, Gunnar Otte, Heinz Leitgöb, Natascha Nisic & Werner Raub: Explanatory and Causal Methodology in Sociology: Developments and Current Issues

Gunnar Otte & Patrick Sachweh: What has Become of Verstehen in Sociology? A Comparison of Developments in Qualitative-Interpretive and Quantitative-Analytical Research

Nico Sonntag & Natascha Nisic: Dynamics of Model Building. Challenges and Prospects of the Method of Decreasing Abstraction

All articles in this special issue are available via Open Access: Link

In the summer semester 2026, the research units Sociology and Methods of Quantitative Social Research (Prof. Dr. Natascha Nisic) and Social Stratification Research (Prof. Dr. Gunnar Otte) are once again organizing the research colloquium "Methods and Social Stratification". We cordially invite all interested parties to participate!

The event will take place from 16:15 - 17:45 in presence format (room 01-511 GFG), prior registration is not necessary.

21.04.2026: Marie Schlosser (JGU) - Cultural Spatial Openness and Closedness in Germany: Empirical Findings for the Music Sector Using KuBiPaD III Data

05.05.2026: Natascha Nisic / Johanna Hoff (JGU) - Remuneration mechanisms in care appointments

19.05.2026: Melanie Wald-Fuhrmann (MPI Frankfurt) - Musical taste as a research topic between music history, psychology and Sociology

09.06.2026: Daniela Grunow (Goethe University Frankfurt) - Interest and Exposure in Comparative Perspective: Shifting Support for Maternal Employment in Australia, Germany, and Switzerland over the Transition to Parenthood

23.06.2026: Annalena Röser (JGU) - More than just a matter of taste? Socioeconomic resources and the social stratification of gastronomy visits

07.07.2026: Andreas Haupt (KIT) - Stress and society

Program

On March 18 and 19, 2026, the Social Stratification Research unit is hosting a symposium focusing on the dialog between academia and practice. The topic is: "Cultural education and participation in transition. The cultural sector in the field of tension between locality and globality." The symposium deals with the challenges that arise for science, politics, cultural institutions, educational providers and the media in the course of the transformation of society towards increasing cultural diversity triggered by globalization, digitalization and migration. What significance do local characteristics, national and European traditions and cultures from all over the world have in supply and demand in the cultural sector - and what relevance should they have? Scientific findings on cultural education and cultural participation will be brought into discussion with requirements and practical experience. The symposium is part of the current funding phase of the panel study "Cultural Education and Cultural Participation in Germany" (KuBiPaD III), which is financially supported by the Federal Ministry of Education, Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth. The symposium is being organized in cooperation with the Institute for Cultural Participation Research, Berlin, and the Fachverband Kulturmanagement.

Under the title "How can cultural education be measured? Development and examination of a measurement instrument for cultural competencies in the population", Holger Lübbe submitted his doctoral dissertation to Faculty 02 at JGU Mainz. The thesis was evaluated by three evaluators with the top grade "summa cum laude" (Prof. Dr. Gunnar Otte, JGU Mainz; Prof. Dr. Johannes Hasselhorn, FAU Erlangen-Nuremberg; Prof. Dr. Jörg Rössel, University of Zurich). In October 2025, Holger Lübbe completed the doctoral degree assessment procedure with a "summa cum laude" in the oral examination. The doctoral dissertation was written as part of the project "Cultural Education and Cultural Participation in Germany" (KuBiPaD), in which the author was employed from 2016 to 2023. In his innovative and interdisciplinary work, he combines basic considerations of Bourdieu's theory of art perception with current methods of educational competence diagnostics and develops a measuring instrument for receptive competences in the fields of music and visual arts. The instrument was validated in a population survey and applied to substantive research questions. The book will be published by Springer VS Verlag in 2026.

Flyer and Outline

The 5th Conference of the Academy of Sociology took place at JGU Mainz from October 8 to 10, 2025. It was organized by Prof. Dr. Gunnar Otte and Prof. Dr. Natascha Nisic and their teams. The theme of the conference was “Societal Challenges – Sociological Answers?” The conference engaged with the challenges facing today’s societies, be they the result of climate change, health epidemics, armed conflicts, economic upheavals, demographic ageing, human migration, multifaceted social inequalities, political populism, or public disinformation through, among other things, generative artificial intelligence. The conference had a focus on the problem-solving capacities of sociology and how to transfer empirical findings to the public and to policy makers. Numerous researchers in sociology and related disciplines with an analytical-empirical orientation presented their current research on a broad range of topics.

Keynote talks were given by Nan Dirk de Graaf (University of Oxford) and Jennie E. Brand (UCLA). Exciting panel discussions focused on "Empirical research and evidence-based policy advice", "Communicating sociological findings in the media" and "From DEAL to DOA? The future of scientific journal publishing."
At the conference, the AS awarded, for the first time, the best sociological replication study with 1,500 €. This award is the first of its kind in sociology anywhere in the world. The study honored with the award was “The competitive advantage of sanctioning institutions revisited: A multilab replication” by Sergio Lo Iacono, Wojtek Przepiorka, Vincent Buskens, Rense Corten, Marcel van Assen, and Arnout van de Rijt, published in PNAS Nexus, 2023 (2), 1–8. Congratulations!
Kasimir Dederichs won the fourth AS dissertation award for his cumulative dissertation thesis titled “Who (Else) Is Involved? – How Voluntary Associations Connect and Separate Us”. The prize money is 1,500 € as well. Congrats!

Visit the conference website for more information: https://as25.sociology.uni-mainz.de/

From September 10 to 12, 2025, the "FReDA/GGS Autumn School" took place again at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, organized by FReDA and GGP in cooperation with the research unit "Interdisciplinary Public Policy" (IPP). It was aimed at researchers who work with FReDA and/or GGS data and would like to receive an introduction to their analysis possibilities.

Further information can be found on the FReDA web page.

Program Autumn School 2025

Upcoming events in our series

"SOZIOLOGIE - Und dann?"
Reports on program of study, transition to a profession and job

Monday, 28.04.2025
Malena Maifarth, M.A. | Academic staff member in the Police Crime Statistics Department | Federal Criminal Police Office, Wiesbaden

Thursday, 22.05.2025
Dr. Veronika Andorfer | Employee in the Department for Questionnaire Development and Data Analysis | Institute for Quality Assurance and Transparency in Healthcare, Berlin

We are delighted that Marie Schlosser has been accepted as one of 11 new junior members of the Gutenberg Academy Fellows Program (GAFP).
The GAFP supports outstanding doctorates and young artists at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz in their appointments in science and the arts. The focus is on interdisciplinary exchange, individual grants and networking.
At the same time, Gunnar Otte was accepted as a senior member of the Gutenberg Academy Fellows Program. The senior members are available to the junior members for continuous exchange and a mentoring program across disciplines.

In the winter semester 2024/25, the research units Sociology and Methods of Quantitative Social Research (Prof. Dr. Natascha Nisic) and Social Stratification Research (Prof. Dr. Gunnar Otte) are once again organizing the research colloquium "Methods and Social Structure". We cordially invite all interested parties to participate!
The event will take place from 16:15 - 17:45 in presence format (room 01-511 GFG), prior registration is not necessary.

26.11.2024 Lea Schwan (University of Trier)
Word worlds and emotional states: Insights into the lifeworld of medical students through topic modeling and emotion analysis.

10.12.2024 Roza Meuleman (Radboud University Nijmegen)
CulturedMeans Connected: The Role of Cultural Tastes in Accessing Prestigious Networks and Positions.

07.01.2025 Andreas Diekmann (University of Leipzig and ETH Zurich)
Climate crisis. Ways out of the dilemma.

21.01.2025 David Reimer (University of Iceland, Reykjavík)
Changing Inequality at Educational Transitions in different institutional contexts: Insights from the EDUCHANGE project.

04.02.2025 Heiko Rüger (Federal Institute for Population Research, Wiesbaden)
Moving, commuting, working from home: trends, influencing factors and consequences of spatial mobility on the job market.

From October 9 to 11, 2024, the conference "Computational Sociology. Methodological Challenges for Research and Teaching" of the working group "Methodology of the Social Sciences" in the Academy of Sociology and the DGS section Methods of Empirical Social Research took place at the University of Bremen with 62 participants.
Conference program

The survey program "FReDA - The Family Demographic Panel" at the Federal Institute for Population Research (BiB) in Wiesbaden and the research unit "Interdisciplinary Public Policy" (IPP) at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) have once again organized a FReDA Autumn School at JGU Mainz from 30.9.-2.10.2024. Further information can be found on the FReDA web page.
Program Autumn School 2024

In the summer semester 2024, the research units Sociology and Methods of Quantitative Social Research (Prof. Dr. Natascha Nisic) and Social Stratification Research (Prof. Dr. Gunnar Otte) are once again organizing the research colloquium "Methods and Social Structure". We cordially invite all interested parties to participate!
The event takes place in presence format (room 01-511 GFG), prior registration is not necessary.
The dates can be found in the program.

Following the success of the first two panel waves, the panel study "Cultural Education and Cultural Participation in Germany" will be funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (since 2025 Federal Ministry of Education, Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth - BMBFSFJ) for a further three years from January 1, 2024. A third panel wave is planned for winter 2024/25, in which parts of the previous question program will be replicated and new survey topics will be added. This time, the survey will be conducted in a mixed-mode design (postal and online survey). In addition to the project manager, Professor Dr. Gunnar Otte, the project team consists of Marie Schlosser, Annalena Röser, Sarah Mandrella (Jonas Jung since 2025) and Gianluca Thorn and is supported by Dave Balzer and Tim Sawert. We are expecting further exciting findings on this topic, which has been neglected in Germany to date.

You can find an overview of the project on our project website.

The increasing volume of publications, the trend towards more replicative research and the need for better insights into the robustness of empirical research findings also present Sociology with new challenges in the research and processing of scientific research literature. Scientific literature should not only be received and evaluated selectively, but as systematically as possible. But what is the best way to do this? This is the topic of the workshop "Systematic Reviews & Meta-Analysis" on 15 and 16 January 2024 at JGU Mainz, organized by the research units Statistics and Econometrics (Professor Reyn van Ewijk) and Social Stratification Research (Professor Gunnar Otte) as well as the Mainz University Library and supported by the research unit Interdisciplinary Public Policy. We are particularly pleased to welcome one of the world's leading experts in meta-analysis, Professor Larry Hedges! It is possible to attend the workshops on systematic reviews and meta-analysis separately or as a package.

Further information: see flyer

As part of the two-semester quantitative-empirical teaching research project under the direction of Dr. Nico Sonntag and Dave Balzer, research work was carried out that attempts to answer social science questions with the help of so-called "natural experiments". Natural experiments are based on the idea of finding "naturally" occurring comparison groups that come close to the ideal of a controlled experiment with random assignment. Two participants presented the results of their analyses at scientific conferences.
Johanna Hoff took part in the joint conference of the DGS section "Social Inequality and Social Structure Analysis" and the Collaborative Research Center "Structural Change of Property" in Jena in September on the topic of "Inequalities in East and West Germany". Her research looks at a comparison of the distribution of gender role attitudes in East and West Germany since reunification.
Theresa Dicks gave a presentation at the Minimum Wage Commission's workshop on researching the effects of the minimum wage in Berlin in October and looked at the question of whether the introduction of the minimum wage has had an impact on job and wage satisfaction in the low-wage sector.
The two studies presented follow a replicative approach, i.e. the questions and research designs of previously published programs of study are subjected to critical examination using other data sources and/or alternative methods. Awareness of the importance of social science replications has grown over the years, as many findings have turned out not to be robust.
We are delighted that students on the Mainz master's degree program are both capable and courageous enough to present their research to a critical audience of experts.
Two other participants, Clara Englert and Sarah Mandrella, will present their projects this autumn as part of the research colloquium "Methods and Social Structure".

In the winter semester 2023/2024, the research units Sociology and Methods of Quantitative Social Research (Prof. Dr. Natascha Nisic) and Social Stratification Research (Prof. Dr. Gunnar Otte) are once again organizing the research colloquium "Methods and Social Structure". We cordially invite all interested parties to participate!
The event takes place in presence format (room 01-511 GFG), prior registration is not necessary. The dates can be found in the program.

The first FReDA Autumn School, a collaboration of the Federal Institute for Population Research (BiB) and the research unit Interdisciplinary Public Policy (IPP) Mainz was held from September 18 to 20, 2023, at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz. FReDA - The German Family Demography Panel Study is an interdisciplinary, long-term study about families and partnerships in Germany. Participants are between the ages of 18 and 49. Twice a year, FReDA surveys its participants and their partners. Data from the recruitment wave are now available for free for scientific and non-commercial purposes. This includes completed surveys from over 37,000 participants. Beginning in the summer of 2023, data from the complete first wave and the partner survey are also available. More information about the study can be found on the FReDA website.

You can find the final program here.

On September 9 & 10, 2023, the BMBF project "Cultural Education and Cultural Participation in Germany" presented itself to the public at the 21st Mainz Science Market in downtown Mainz. Numerous visitors learned about the project and discussed it with the project team. They were also able to try out an app programmed by project staff member Joschka Baum, which uses a short questionnaire to classify personal cultural tastes and compare them with statistical twins from the German population.

The Academy of Sociology has institutionalized a working group "Methodology of the Social Sciences" to discuss methodological foundations of theory formation and empirical research. The kick-off workshop took place on September 6 and 7, 2023 at JGU Mainz and focused on theory formation and theory testing in analytical-empirical sociology. Fundamental methodological principles and current challenges were discussed in equal measure. Keynote speeches were given by Karl-Dieter Opp, Andreas Diekmann and Andreas Flache. In addition to other scientific presentations, there were two roundtables on the relevance of replicative research for the examination and further development of theories and on the teaching of analytical-empirical sociological theory and social science methodology in programs of study.

Program

On April 4 and 5, the workshop "Weighting of Survey Data" took place at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz under the direction of Dr. Uta Landrock and Dr. Anne Konrad from the Research Data Center of the Leibniz Institute for Educational Trajectories Bamberg.
The 19 participants from Sociology, Political Science, Communication Studies, Economics and Psychology, who are confronted with questions of weighting in current projects when analyzing self-collected or secondarily used data, familiarized themselves with the handling and construction of their own weights for cross-sectional and longitudinal samples.

The event was organized by the research unit Social Stratification (Prof. Dr. Gunnar Otte). We would like to thank the Interdisciplinary Public Policy (IPP ) research unit for its financial support.

What is good sociological research? Gunnar Otte, Tim Sawert, Josef Brüderl, Stefanie Kley, Clemens Kroneberg and Ingo Rohlfing have addressed this fundamental scientific question. They developed a catalog of eleven quality criteria from the analytical-empirical perspective of the social sciences. The catalog of criteria includes quality requirements for theory development and empirical social research. It can be applied to different research methods. The article has been published in the Journal of Sociology in a special issue entitled "Quality Criteria".

Link

Which conscious and unconscious decisions in data analysis influence the results and replicability of social science programs of study? A total of 73 teams consisting of 161 researchers worldwide addressed this question on the initiative of Nate Breznau (University of Bremen), Eike Mark Rinke (University of Leeds) and Alexander Wuttke (LMU Munich). The hypothesis that immigration reduces support for social policy in the destination country was chosen as an exemplary research question. The aim was first to replicate a corresponding, known result from quantitative-empirical research and then to answer the present research question with alternative model specifications. It turns out that the results diverge strongly and depend on a large number of small modeling decisions. This finding underlines the importance of open data and methods ("open science"), the communication of uncertainty in social science research practice and the importance of replication in general.

Two teams were involved with members of the research units Social Stratifictation and Sociology and Methods of Quantitative Social Research (Gunnar Otte, Katharina Kunißen, Anna Forke, Dave Balzer and Nico Sonntag).

The results of the project have been published in the renowned journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Link

On 6 and 7 October 2022, JGU Mainz hosted a workshop on the theoretical foundations of analytical-empirical sociology, organized by Professor Gunnar Otte (Social Stratification Research), Professor Natascha Nisic and Nico Sonntag (Sociology and Methods of Quantitative Social Research) and Professor Hartmut Esser (University of Mannheim). In the discussion-intensive workshop, substitutes from Sociology and Philosophy exchanged views on the current state of the analytical-empirical research program in the social sciences. The workshop was financially supported by the Academy of Sociology.

Program

For her doctoral dissertation "The independent variable problem. Welfare stateness as an explanatory concept", Katharina Kunißen won the Peter A. Berger Prize of the DGS section "Social Inequality and Social Structure Analysis" for the best doctoral dissertation of the past two years (together with Carlotta Giustozzi). In her doctoral dissertation, which was evaluated summa cum laude, Katharina Kunißen deals with a long-neglected problem in comparative social structure and welfare research, namely the justification of strategies with which welfare statehood can be adequately used as an explanatory concept in multi-level statistical models, depending on the object of investigation. The book (Open Access) is published by Springer VS.

From March 14 to 18, the Spring School "Webscraping and Data Mining with Python" took place at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz under the direction of Dr. Jan R. Riebling (Bergische Universität Wuppertal). As part of the 5-day course, the 30 participants from a total of seven universities and research institutions first familiarized themselves with the Python programming language in order to then learn about and practically apply strategies for the extraction and analysis of digital process data.

The event was organized by the research units Social Stratification Research (Prof. Dr. Gunnar Otte) and Sociology and Methods of Quantitative Social Research (Prof. Dr. Natascha Nisic). The workshop was financially supported by the Interdisciplinary Public Policy research unit.

We would like to thank everyone involved for the exciting and intensive event!

Sigrid Kesy proved her sense of humor at the joint Christmas party of several research units of the Institute of Sociology! With her socially unifying sense of humor, she got the most laughs and won the first ever "Institute Joker" prize. We congratulate her warmly and wish her lots of fun in her work!

Marie Schlosser won the 2021 ALLBUS Young Talent Award with her bachelor's thesis "Social status and ethical consumption compared over time". The thesis contrasts the assumption of the status-based structuring of ethically correct consumer actions derived from Pierre Bourdieu's lifestyle approach with Ulrich Beck's individualization thesis. The two competing theses were examined from a comparative perspective using data from the ALLBUS 2008 and 2018. It was shown that the socio-economic characteristics of education and income have a reinforcing influence on ethical consumer behavior. This correlation remained over the period under review. Contrary to the thesis that social actions are decoupled from socio-structural characteristics and in line with Bourdieu's structuring assumption, ethical consumption is consistently resource-dependent.

From the end of March 2021, the new round of the "Leisure and Culture in Germany" survey will be launched across Germany in the coming weeks and months. All respondents who took part in the 2018 baseline survey will be asked to take part again. In the follow-up study, we would like to find out how cultural preferences and leisure behavior have changed in recent years, partly due to the coronavirus pandemic. There are also some new survey focuses. In order to ensure representative statements for 2021, additional participants who were not included in the first study will be included in the survey. Due to the pandemic-related contact restrictions and in order to guarantee the health of all participants, the interviews will be conducted by telephone for the time being. We would be very grateful for your support!

To the web page for our study participants

In the course of long-term social developments such as globalization, pluralization and digitalization, liberal democracies are increasingly facing new challenges. In Western societies, social inequalities have worsened in some cases in recent decades, new social divisions and conflicts have emerged, established parties have come under pressure from right-wing populist movements and the COVID-19 pandemic has created new fears and upheavals in society. The newly launched mini-research training group "Resilient Institutions" aims to initiate research in an interdisciplinary team on the question of how democratic institutions are perceived and evaluated by the population, how these processes are socially and structurally founded and how institutions must be designed in order to successfully adapt to changing conditions.

From April 2021, five doctoral candidates in Political Science, Sociology and Economics will be supported with fellowships for a period of three years and continuously networked with each other through a joint learning and exchange program as part of the Mini Research Training Group. The supervision is provided by Prof. Dr. Claudia Landwehr, Prof. Dr. Kai Arzheimer, Prof. Dr. Sascha Huber (all Political Science), Prof. Dr. Gunnar Otte (Sociology) and Prof. Dr. Philipp Harms (Economics).

To the web page

The BMBF-funded panel project "Cultural Education and Cultural Participation in Germany" now has its own website with information and results for those interested in the project.

To the web page

The German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) is supporting the research project "Cultural Education and Cultural Participation in Germany" in a second funding period from December 2019 to May 2023 with a volume of approx. 1.46 million euros.

In the second half of 2018, the planned baseline study was conducted in cooperation with the survey institute infas, Bonn, with 2592 randomly selected respondents from the German-speaking resident population in Germany aged 15 and over. A book publication of the results is planned for fall 2020 by Campus Verlag.

The continuation project plans to expand the baseline study into a panel study, i.e. to survey the same people again in a 2nd wave and to increase the sample by additional people. The panel structure of the data is to be used to gain insights into the stability and change of cultural preferences and practices, the influence of biographical events on cultural participation and the predictive effect of the cultural competencies recorded in the first wave.

In addition to the project manager, Professor Dr. Gunnar Otte, the project team includes Holger Lübbe and Luisa Wingerter as academic staff members and Marie Schlosser and Hannah Bolten as graduate assistants.

On 18 and 19 November 2019, the Social Structure Analysis research unit held a symposium at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz to mark the conclusion of the "Cultural Education and Cultural Participation in Germany" research project funded by the federal ministry of education and research.

The symposium allowed substitutes from the cultural public to present key project results and discuss them with them. The focus was on the following questions: Who undertakes which cultural activities, how often and in what way? Why do people differ greatly in their tastes and their receptive and active participation? What role does the cultural education acquired in the course of life play in current cultural participation? What are the starting points for attracting people to cultural activities? Several guest lectures provided additional input and confronted the project results with perspectives from cultural practice.

Program

Katharina Kunißen was awarded the JGU Teaching Prize at the DIES LEGENDI on October 28, 2019.

The JGU Teaching Prize has been awarded by the Gutenberg Teaching Council (GTC) since the 2016/17 winter semester. Candidates for the teaching award can be nominated by the faculties every three semesters. The award is also based on the course evaluations by the Center for Quality Assurance (ZQ).

Further information on the JGU Teaching Award

Newly published by Springer-Verlag:
Mara Boehle (2019): Poverty of families in social change. Distribution, structure, explanations.
Wiesbaden: Springer VS. https://www.springer.com/de/book/9783658279707

About this book:
Mara Boehle examines the long-term change and causes of poverty among families in Germany on the basis of a theoretical model and empirical data. The large number of poverty and social reports that have diagnosed the increasing risk of poverty in various family forms since the 1970s is contrasted by hardly any contributions that systematically deal with the causes of this development. The author closes this gap and shows, on the basis of microcensus data, that single parents occupy a special position and have a decisive influence on the course of poverty in the family sector. Their poverty development proves to be the result of unfavorable employment models and the specific family policy framework of the old Federal Republic.

Katharina Kunißen, Debora Eicher and Gunnar Otte won the ALLBUS Prize 2019 with their publication "Social status and cultural taste: A method-critical comparison of empirical tests of the omnivore-univore thesis". The study examines Richard A. Peterson's assertion that cultural consumption no longer exclusively follows the contrast between high and popular cultural preferences. Rather, according to the thesis, higher social classes in particular are characterized by a diverse, cosmopolitan taste that transcends symbolic boundaries ("omnivores"), while lower social classes tend to be more one-sided in their cultural consumption ("univores"). The study uses the example of musical taste with data from the ALLBUS 2014 for Germany in the most comprehensive way to date and illustrates the extent to which different theoretical approaches produce divergent results when translated into empirical operationalizations and methods of analysis.

To the article

In the fall of 2017, the Social Stratification research unit unit conducted a survey of the Wiesbaden population in cooperation with the Cultural Office and the Office for Statistics and Urban Research. Over 1,200 randomly selected citizens took part and provided information about their interests, activities and attitudes with regard to the leisure and cultural activities on offer in their city. The results of the survey have now been compiled in a final report and are available at the following link:

Final report "Cultural participation in Wiesbaden"

The Social Stratification research unit has joined the "Interdisciplinary Public Policy" (IPP) research unit at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz. In cooperation with various disciplines, the effects of social institutions on human action, social coexistence and social inequalities are investigated here.

We are delighted that Katharina Kunißen has been accepted as one of 12 new junior members of the Gutenberg Academy.
The Gutenberg Academy supports excellent doctoral students and young artists at Johannes Gutenberg University in their appointments in science and the arts. Interdisciplinary exchange, individual grants and networking are of central importance to the Academy.

Who receives which cultural products in Germany, how and why?
This question is being investigated by the research project led by Professor Dr. Gunnar Otte and funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) from December 2016 to November 2019 (funding volume almost 1.15 million euros). The project team includes Anna Forke and Holger Lübbe (as academic staff members) as well as Dave Balzer and Nina Wierczeiko (as graduate assistants). The project focuses on the largest nationwide, interdisciplinary population survey to date on the topic of cultural education and cultural participation. The study is based on international reference studies such as "Pratique culturelles des Francais" (France) and "Taking Part" (United Kingdom), but also sets innovative accents on an international scale in the conception of measuring instruments for cultural education and cultural participation.

On February 25 and 26, 2016, the spring conference of the DGS section "Social Inequality and Social Structure Analysis" took place at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz on the topic of "Social Structure and Culture". Organization: Gunnar Otte (JGU Mainz) and Peter A. Berger (University of Rostock).

Event report

Conference program

Projektseminar: Forschungspraktikum

Courses in small groups

Praxismodul: Qualitative Ausrichtung

Praxismodul: Quantitative Ausrichtung