Sozial­wissenschaften – Master (alle)

The goal of this course is to provide an introduction into maximum-likelihood estimation.

This lecture gives an overview of selected theoretical concepts and the main research findings in the field of Comparative Government, specifically focusing on the role of political institutions and their impact for political decision-making at all stages in the political process. The course introduces a number of core themes in the comparative study of political institutions, such as electoral institutions and their effects on turnout, voting behaviour and party strategies. In addition, the lecture focuses on the impact of different institutional designs on patterns of party competition, government formation and coalition governance. In a third step, we discuss the effects of political institutions and of personal characteristics of legislators on various aspects of decision-making within parliaments and governments.

Course Description:

The main goal of this lecture is to present an advanced introduction to theoretical approaches, key concepts, and substantive issues in comparative political behavior. Building on a multi-level perspective, it will provide an overview of key concepts and theories in the analysis of micro-level processes of political behavior that are embedded in and feed into macro-level processes. Capitalizing on this analytical perspective, the lecture will also address major changes in the relations­hip between societal and political processes and institutions.

Registration: via Studien­portal


Office hour:  online, by appointment only

IPE Vorlesung:
This lecture offers an introduction to current research topics in the field of International Political Economy (IPE). It examines how international and domestic politics interact with global flows of goods, finance, and people across national borders. After introducing what it means to study IPE in the age of globalization, the course addresses four major themes of current IPE research. We will learn about internationale trade and the chances and challenges that come with the intensifying exchange of goods across the globe. Lectures on international finance will focus on how global financial flows interact with political and economic stability, instability, and crises. We will also focus on international development and will learn about patterns of global economic inequality and development aid. The lecture will also adress the role of international institutions for the globalized economy.

The security of individuals and states depends profoundly on international politics. Beyond the realm of security, structures and actors of “global governance” have been proliferating for many years. They influence crucial public policies in diverse ways. This lecture surveys academic debates on key topics of international politics, including: the sources of war, peace, and terrorism, the emergence and operation of international organizations and transnational civil society, and the making of key international policy outcomes including respect for human rights and climate policies.

This course is a continuation of the intro into Game Theory and surveys key applications of game theory with a particular emphasis on the link of theories, methods and empirics. Emphasis will be placed on prominent applications of those concepts in political science, in both comparative and international politics. Topics covered include electoral competition, delegation, political agency, governmental veto players, authoritarian politics, manipulation, war and crisis bargaining. While the focus is on understanding applied work, previous training in game theory is required. Students will build upon their previous game theory training to become informed consumers of scholarship utilizing the methodology and begin to learn how to apply game-theoretic logic to their own work. The course is partly taught from lecture notes, at other times students present a research paper and stimulate discussion in class.

To openly express one’s views and the freedom to obtain and share information are the mostfundamental civil liberties. While they are under constant and serious threat in authoritarian contexts, the question of how free speech should be regulated is also a concern in liberal democracies. The aim of this course is to discuss contemporary scholarly research on the politics of free speech and censorship. Why is free expression so important? Why and how do states actually censor and regulate free speech. And what are the direct, the political and the unintended effects of censorship and speech regulation? How do social media and the digital revolution impact on these questions? Next to substantive discussion the course will place great emphasis on the practice of quantitative political research.

Research on affective polarization, which has delivered important insights into the transformation of party competition in the United States, finds that animosity between in- and outgroups conveyed from the party elite level to the voters (Levendusky, 2009; Lenz, 2013). The recent events around the U.S. presidential election that partisan identity is dominating other classical cleavages, such as class, race, and religion. Although cross-national studies find similar patterns among European voters (Colantone and Stanig, 2018; Wagner, 2020), little is known about whether, when, and under which conditions in- and outgroups emerge in party competition outside the United States. In this seminar we will re-examine studies in affective polarization around the World. After introducing into theories on affective polarization, the focus will be on the growing number of studies examining affective polarization at the party elite and voter level around the world.

This seminar discusses seminal and current work on state repression, security and peace. It introduces on why and how states violate human rights. It focuses on how governments organize and implement repression and how they aim to justify or obfuscate state violence, particularly in the context of democratic institutions and international human rights norms. The discussion also discusses peace as a more heterogenous concept than the absence of war. Over the course of the seminar you will develop your own research question on one of the topics discussed in the seminar and carrying out your own research. Additionally, you are expected to read all required materials, provide feedback on other student’s work and lead one class discussion.

This tutorial accompanies the course “Advanced Quantitative Methods” in the M.A. program in Political Science.

Blockchain Economics

The blockchain is a global technology which aims to revolutionize several areas of society by extending its tenets of decentralization, transparency, and verifiability to domains in which it was previously impossible or impractical. The blockchain popularity is often associated and confused with that of Bitcoin, however Bitcoin is just its oldest application, alongside many other promising ones.

For instance, the blockchain technology can enormously reduce frictional costs of financial services, eliminating the “middle-man” costs and allowing seemingly instantaneous payments across the globe just for fractional fees. The blockchain technology can also improve the trust in and the efficiency of supply chain systems by allowing anyone to trace each product to its source, simply by looking up the records in a distributed digital ledger. The blockchain technology can also be used to create solid digital economies in gaming environments, where collectibles and other digital assets can be reliably owned, sold, and exchanged.

Notwithstanding the rapidly evolving eco­system of new applications, many commentators have described the blockchain as a “solution in search of a problem.” This seminar invites students to boldly fill this gap, by thinking at the blockchain technology at its maximum level of abstraction: as a tool to create, test and validate economic and governance designs.

Topics: Blockchain Technology, Different Blockchains, Consensus Mechanisms, Cryptocurrencies, Decentralized Finance (DeFi), the Metaverse and NFTs, Tokenization, Governance, Privacy.

Radical Markets

The book “Radical Markets” by Posner and Weyl argues that wealthy countries face a triple social crisis of rising inequality, economic stagnation, and failing political legitimacy. This crisis results from a failure of ideas and it proposes a new set of policies labeled “Radical Markets” that are at once more free market than the right and more egalitarian than the left to reunite the classic liberal coalition. Radical Markets argues that expanding the scope of markets is the only way to reduce inequality, restore robust economic growth, and resolve political conflicts.  The final aim of the book is to show how the emancipatory force of genuinely open, free, and competitive markets can reawaken the dormant nineteenth-century spirit of liberal reform and lead to greater equality, prosperity, and cooperation. This seminar invites students to embrace the bold and radical vision put forward in this book to daringly develop new solutions to socio-economic problems, as well as to criticize and improve upon the solutions proposed by Posner and Weyl.

Topics: Private Property, Auctions, Quadratic Voting, Immigration Sponsorships, Antitrust Laws, Data Labor and Dignity.

Please note:

The seminar will take place during the University Heidelberg Summer semester which is: 12 April 2021 – 24. July 2021. The course will be fully online and the University of Heidelberg will provide a video conferencing tool for it (https://moodle.uni-heidelberg.de/login/index.php) where students can register and where additional material will be uploaded. Registration will start later as at the University of Mannheim. Further information on the date and registration will be announced in due course.

The seminar will be instructed by Stefano Balietti (stefano.balietti@awi.uni-heidelberg.de). If you have any questions please contact him or deborah.gottinger-wuertz@uni-mannheim.de

This advanced seminar will explore recent social science research that seeks to explain variation in career opportunities within organizations and career mobility between organizations. We will consider a variety of research questions: what kinds of changes do we observe in career paths over time? How much of the change can be attributed to the variation in experience between different cohorts of workers? How much of the change in career patterns is due to organizational change within firms? How does matching between labor demand and supply work in different occupational settings? What are the underlying mechanisms that channel mobility within and between organizations? To what extent are skills transferable from one job to the next? How do new occupations and professions emerge and establish themselves? To address these and further questions, we will rely both on recent theoretical advances and on empirical studies in various settings.

The goal of this seminar is to introduce students to the interface between two thematic areas of sociology: economic sociology and social inequality. Economic sociology extends the sociological approach to the study of economic life by analyzing the interactions between social structure and economic action. This seminar studies social actors in economic settings and asks how differences in their relational arrangements and decision strategies shape their economic outcomes and create, maintain, and reproduce inequality. For this purpose, we will consider a series of mid-range concepts drawn from economic sociology and examine their application on different aspects of inequality.
For example, the seminar will examine the role of social networks in constructing and promoting gendered occupational preferences and how this is essential for explaining the gender wage gap. The seminar will begin with a short introductory lecture on the field of economic sociology and social inequality. The following sessions will combine readings on diverse aspects of social inequality and economic arrangements with class discussions on the assigned readings. Each of the sessions will focus on a particular concept, its origins, varying design strategies for studying the concept empirically, and its significance for theory and policy. The goal of this seminar is to introduce economic sociology as an approach and research program to understand and explain the relations­hip between the economy and social and economic inequality in the modern era.

Description: This seminar deals with identity, religion, and intergroup relations. Broadly speaking, we will start by focusing on mechanisms that drive the development of ethnic, national, and religious identities and end by examining the ways in which these identities affect intergroup attitudes and behavior.
In the first half of the seminar, we will introduce the concept of social identity and its theoretical foundations and implications. We will discuss the development and peculiarities of ethnic, national, and religious identities. Reading both conceptual and empirical papers, we are particularly interested in how identity development is shaped by intergroup relations. Considering the perspective of both minority and majority group members, we will examine how minority members react to perceived discrimination as well as what attitudes majority group members hold towards members of different minority groups.
In the second half of the seminar, we will ask how identities affect intergroup relations and discuss empirical studies on intergroup attitudes and friendship. In the final weeks, participants will develop an own research idea that will result in a term paper. The term paper has to be submitted after the end of the seminar, and it can be either an empirical study or a theoretical elaboration. To facilitate the writing of the term papers, students will present and discuss each other’s ideas in the last weeks in class.

Description

In addition to a thorough understanding of the substantive field you are studying you need firm methodological and statistical knowledge in order to successfully conduct quantitative social research. This seminar will give you the opportunity to apply and expand your knowledge of social research by replicating published research findings.

The research that we are going to replicate was conducted with data from publicly available survey data like the European Social Survey (ESS), the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP) or the European Values Study (EVS). Data from surveys like these have several advantages: the surveys follow a repeated cross-section design, a research design particularly well suited to study social change; they are comparative surveys allowing you to compare data cross-nationally on a broad range of topics; the surveys follow rigorous methodological standards and, finally, data are available at no cost and can be downloaded from the web.

Replicating published research has the advantage that you are able to check your results against existing results. By trying to replicate previous research you learn where the original researcher has made tacit decisions not documented in the paper (e.g. defining the analysis sample, coding of variables, treatment of missing values). Replicating social research also trains you to judge the validity of research results.

In addition to these primarily pedagogical aspects replicating research is important from an epistemological point of view as well. Through replication of research by independent research groups biases in previous work can be discovered and findings can be validated (see Hendrick 1991, King 1995).

Assignment

Participants should choose a published paper and try to replicate the findings reported in it using the same data. The results to be replicated often will be given in a table containing the outcome of a multivariate model. Please document each step in your attempt to replicate the findings, report and explain the decisions you had to make during data preparation and data analysis. If you fail to replicate the results please indicate possible explanations. Your paper should not exceed 5,000 words; please add your documented syntax in the appendix.

Papers should be delivered in electronic form no later than August 2, 2021.

 

Program

 

March 5, 2021, Linear regression

Knesebeck, Olaf von dem, Nico Dragano and Johannes Siegrist, 2005: Social capital and self-rated health in 21 European countries. GMS Psycho-Social-Medicine 2. http://www.egms.de/static/pdf/journals/psm/2005–2/psm000011.pdf (2014–02-09)

 

March 26, 2021, Logistic regression

Knesebeck, Olaf von dem, Nico Dragano and Johannes Siegrist, 2005: Social capital and self-rated health in 21 European countries. GMS Psycho-Social-Medicine 2. http://www.egms.de/static/pdf/journals/psm/2005–2/psm000011.pdf (2014–02-09)

Bambra, Clare, und Terje A. Eikemo. 2009. Welfare state regimes, unemployment and health: a comparative study of the relations­hip between unemployment and self-reported health in 23 European countries. Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health 63:92–98.

 

April 16, 2021, Probit regression

Humphreys, Brad, Katerina Maresova und Jane Ruseski. 2012. Institutional Factors, Sport Policy, and Individual Sport Participation: An International Comparison. University of Alberta, Department of Economics, Institute for Public Economics: Working Paper No. 2012–01.

 

May 7, 2021, Ordered logit

Wang, Miao, und Man Chiu Sunnz Wong. 2011. Leisure and happiness in the United States: evidence from survey data. Applied Economics Letters 18:1813–1816.

 

May 21, 2021, Measurement I

Green, Eva G. T. 2009. Who Can Enter? A Multilevel Analysis on Public Support for Immigration Criteria across 20 European Countries. Group Processes and Intergroup Relations 12:41–60.

 

June 4, 2021, Multi-level modelling I

Green, Eva G. T. 2009. Who Can Enter? A Multilevel Analysis on Public Support for Immigration Criteria across 20 European Countries. Group Processes and Intergroup Relations 12:41–60.

 

June 11, 2021, Multi-level modelling II

Pampel, Fred C. 2012. Does reading keep you thin? Leisure activities, cultural tastes, and body weight in comparative perspective. Sociology of Health & Illness 34:396–411.

Gerhards, Jürgen, Silke Hans und Michael Mutz. 2013. Social Class and Cultural Consumption: The Impact of Modernisation in a Comparative European Perspective. Comparative Sociology 32:160–183.

 

References *

 

A Statistical modeling

* Bauer, Gerrit, 2015: Graphical Display of Regression Results. Pp. 205–224 in: Henning Best and Christof Wolf (eds.): Handbook of Regression Analysis and Causal Inference. London: Sage.

* Best, Henning and Christof Wolf, 2015: Logistic Regression. Pp. 153–172 in: Henning Best and Christof Wolf (eds.): Handbook of Regression Analysis and Causal Inference. London: Sage.

Gelman, Andrew, und Jennifer Hill. 2007. Data Analysis Using Regression and Multilevel/Hierarchical Models. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Hox, J. J. 2010. Multilevel analysis. Techniques and applications. 2nd Edition. New York: Routledge.

Long, J. S., und J. Freese. 2014. Regression models for categorical dependent variables using Stata. 3rd Edition. College Station: Stata Press.

Long, J. Scott. 1997. Regression Models for Categorical and Limited Dependent Variables. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

* Long, J. Scott, 2015: Regression Models for Nominal and Ordinal Outcomes. 173–204 in: Henning Best and Christof Wolf (eds.): Handbook of Regression Analysis and Causal Inference. London: Sage.

Menard, Scott. 1995. Applied Logistic Regression Analysis. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

* Meuleman, Bart, Geert Loosveldt and Viktor Emonds, 2015: Regression analysis: Assumptions and Diagnostics. Pp. 83–110 in: Henning Best and Christof Wolf (eds.): Handbook of Regression Analysis and Causal Inference. London: Sage.

* Steenkamp, Jan-Benedict E. M. and Hans Baumgartner, 1998: Assessing Measurement invariance in Cross-National Consumer Research. Journal of Consumer Research, 25: 78–90.

* Wolf, Christof and Henning Best, 2015: Linear Regression. Pp. 57–82 in: Henning Best and Christof Wolf (eds.): Handbook of Regression Analysis and Causal Inference. London: Sage.

 

B Replication

* Brandt, M. J., IJzerman, H., Dijksterhuis, A., Farach, F. J., Geller, J., Giner-Sorolla, R., van 't Veer, A. 2014: The Replication Recipe: What makes for a convincing replication? Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 50, 217–224.

* Damian, E., Meuleman, B., & Van Oorschot, W. (2019). Transparency and Replication in Cross-national Survey Research: Identification of Problems and Possible Solutions. Sociological Methods & Research. doi:DOI: 10.1177/0049124119882452

Hendrick, Clyde, 1991: Replications, Strict Replications, and Conceptual Replications: Are They Important? Pp. 41–49 in: James W. Neuliep (ed.): Replication Research in the Social Sciences: Newbury Park, CA: Sage.

 

* Texts marked with an asterisk as well as all texts containing research to replicate can be downloaded from the course’s space on ILIAS.

In the age of increasing migration and the raise of right-wing populist parties the question of how to measure and explain xenophobic and populist attitudes becomes very important. While xenophobia has already been investigated for a long time, even if it still constitutes a controversial issue how to measure it, research on populist attitudes has started only very recently. In this seminar current and innovative approaches as well as ideas for further developments will be discussed. Moreover, existing studies will be replicated to explore them more deeply.

Research on immigration, ethnic diversity and the integration of migrants and their descendants has made huge progress in the last decade. This seminar deals with important strands of current research, covering a wide spectrum of topics related to this field. They range from the causes of migration, through various dimensions of integration (cognitive-cultural, structural, social and emotional integration), to the general connection between ethnic diversity and societal context. Invidual sessions will elaborate key concepts, major descriptive facts as well as the theoretical  and methodological state of the art.

Poverty and social exclusion are extreme forms of inequality in modern societies. In Europe, these phenomena show up in different forms and imply different consequences for the people at risk. The seminar will provide an introduction into various concepts, dimensions and measures of poverty and social conclusion. We will discuss theories on the causes of poverty and social exclusion, learn about different policies throughout Europe to lower poverty, and we will study consequences of poverty in various domains.

In the wake of the digital revolution, societies store an ever-increasing amount of data on humans and their behavior. In parallel, advances in computational power & methods allow for meaningful interpretations of such data. This enables social scientists to approach old questions with new methods, but also to study entirely new questions.
The seminar introduces students to different aspects of this “big data revolution”. It comprises theoretical sessions in which discuss the implications such as the societal and scientific opportunities and challenges of new forms of data and methods (from social media, communications platforms, Internet of Things devices, sensors/wearables, and mobile phones, digitized old data records, machine learning). In addition, it comprises lab sessions in which we learn – hands-on – how such new forms of data can be captured, curated, and analyzed using computational methods. Students apply what they have learned in their own projects.

Course Description
Surveys are a major data source for quantitative social science research. This graduate-level course will teach the fundamentals of survey design. The course covers the major steps of implementing and conducting a survey and design decisions at each step. In addition, sources of error at each step are discussed. For illustration purposes and exercise, the course will draw on well-known large-scale surveys such as the German General Survey (ALLBUS), European Social Survey (ESS), European Values Study (EVS), and the German Socio-economic Panel (SOEP).

Multilevel modeling is used when observations on the individual level are nested in units of one or more higher levels (e.g. students in classes in schools). The course will cover the logic of multilevel modeling, its statistical background, and implementation with Stata. Applications will come from international comparative research treating countries as the higher level units. Data from the International Social Survey Program and the PIONEUR project (on intra-European migration) serve as examples. However, students are also encouraged to bring their own data.

The course provides a broad overview over methods of longitudinal data analysis, with a focus on the analysis of panel data. Compared to cross-sectional data, panel data can allow to improve causal inference. The first objective of this course is to understand why and under which conditions this is the case. In the next step, we will discuss a variety of different modeling approaches to panel data (fixed effects, random effects, first difference) and learn how to decide between these models. The lecture also provides an overview over event history models. It is highly recommended to participate in the parallel exercises to this lecture, in which the presented models are applied to real data sets.

Information for Mannheim Master in Data Science students:
Please be aware that there are only 3 places reserved for students of the Mannheim Master in Data Science. You can register via the portal until 31.01.2021. Places will be allocated randomly after this deadline. Please check on February 1, 2021 to see if you are (still) registered.

This seminar will provide an introduction how to use R, a powerful programming language that is often used for statistical analyses, simulations, and cognitive modeling. The seminar first will provide a thorough introduction covering the core functionality such as objects, functions, data management, and plotting.
 
The last sessions of the seminar will address how to perform specific statistical analyses in R such as:
* Generalized linear mixed models with lme4 (also known as hierarchical
models)
* Simple structural equation models
* Basic set-up of Monte-Carlo simulations
* Simple cognitive modeling (e.g., signal detection or multinomial processing trees)
 
It is planned that participants practice R in homework assignments and work on small group projects such as analyzing own data, replicating a paper, or running a small simulation.

During recent years interventions using diary methods became increasingly popular within several fields of psychology, including health psychology and organizatinal psychology. These interventions use „intensive longitudinal designs“ to apply the treatment and to assess the data and build on daily-survey approaches that aim at „capturing life as it is lived” (Bolger, Davis, Rafaeli, 2003, p. 579). Frequent assessments typically implemented in daily-survey approaches allow for modeling change in affect, attitude, and behavior over time.

In this course we will discuss the nature of diary interventions, the research options they offer, as well as potential problems and challenges.

In diesem Seminar haben die Studierenden die Möglichkeit, ihre Kenntnisse in verschiedenen Störungs­bereichen und Anwendungs­feldern der Klinischen Psychologie zu vertiefen.

Insbesondere soll während des Semesters in Klein­gruppen unter Berücksichtigung aktueller Forschungs­ergebnisse eine eigene Fragestellung aus dem Bereich Grundlagen, Mechanismen und Diagnostik psychischer Störungen entwickelt, sowie Möglichkeiten zur Untersuchung dieser Fragestellung ausgearbeitet werden.

Schwierige Situationen in der Therapie erlebt jede/ Therapeut*in. In der Arbeit mit Kindern und Jugendlichen ergeben sich aufgrund der entwicklungs­psychologischen Besonderheiten sowie der Komplexität der Arbeit mit Eltern, Lehr­ern und Jugendhilfe besondere Herausforderungen, die in diesem Seminar adressiert werden. Im Rahmen der Vertiefung von Kenntnissen zur Diagnostik und Behandlung psychischer Störungen im Kindes- und Jugendalter werden herausfordernde Situationen wie bspw. Suizidalität, Schweigen, Probleme in der Elternarbeit näher beleuchtet und der Umgang mit ihnen aufgezeigt und diskutiert.

Im Seminar werden theoretische Ansätze und empirische Forschungs­ergebnisse der Medienpsychologie sowohl zu klassischen Informations- und Unterhaltungs­medien als auch zu Internetportalen oder zum Social Web im Rahmen empirischer Projekt­studien vertieft. Nach einer Einführung leiten die Studierenden in Arbeits­gruppen zu einer selbst gewählten Fragestellung nach Sichtung des Forschungs­standes Hypothesen her und begründen diese. Zu Über­prüfung der Hypothesen wird für jedes Projekt ein experimentelles Untesuchungs­design entwickelt und mit dem Umfragetool UniPark (EFS Survery) als Online-Experiment umgesetzt und durchgeführt. Die erhobenen Daten werden statistisch (SPSS. R) ausgewertet und im Lichte der formulierten Hypothesen interpretiert. In der abschließenden Sitzung werden in Analogie zu einer Fach­konferenz die Ergebnisse präsentiert und gemeinsam diskutiert.

Anmeldung:
über das Portal

Bitte richten Sie Fragen zur Veranstaltung direkt an Prof. Mangold.

Kontakt:
mangold@hdm-stuttgart.de

Themenübersicht:
1. Pharmakologie der ZNS Wirkung
2. Klassifikations­vorschläge für NPPharmaka
3. Spezielle NPPharm (Wirkmechanismus, Wirksamkeit, Risiken, unerwünschte Neben­wirkungen)
   – Antipsychotika
   – Antidepressiva
   – Anxiolytika
   – Antidementiva
   – Stimulantia
   – Parkinson Pharmaka
   – Analgetika
4. Placebo? Methodologische und therapeutische Implikationen
5. Psychotherapie versus Pharmakotherapie?
6. Gesundheits­markt und Ökonomie der NPPharm