Change of Contemporary Societies

Throughout the many different subject areas, Change of Contemporary Societies has set itself the goal of developing methods within the social sciences and adapting them to the new, present-day issues. In one of several DFG-sponsored projects in this area, academics are working on investigating the type and extent of measurement errors in autobiographical events captured retrospectively in surveys. Models to help explain memory errors are to be developed and tested in this context.
Statistical modelling of social processes was the focus of another project, also sponsored by the DFG, which draws to a close in 2010. The particular feature of this model lies in the fact that it allows consideration of the social process in which a decision is taken and which contributes to the decision. The model is applied to help analyse decisions within partnerships about fulfilling the wish to have children.