V ISA Forum of Sociology – Call for Abstracts
V ISA Forum of Sociology – Knowing Justice in the Anthropocene; July 6-11, 2025, Rabat, Morocco
For details, visit: https://www.isa-sociology.org/en/conferences/forum/rabat-2025
Call for Abstracts
RC33 invites you to propose an abstract for the RC33 Logic and Methodology sessions in Sociology at the 5th ISA Forum of Sociology 2025. Your abstracts can be submitted via the ISA website (link) by October 15, 2024 (24:00 UTC).
Sessions RC33 Logic and Methodology in Sociology
1. Adapting to Digitalization Trends: Issues of Representation Quality in a New Era of General Population Surveys after the COVID-19 Pandemic?
Over the last decades, digital technologies have reshaped survey practices globally, although there is still inadequate internet access in many low-income countries. The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the shift towards online methodologies, fundamentally transforming general population surveys. This session aims to explore these significant changes, focusing on new conditions of data collection.
Since the pandemic, we have observed the rise of online-access panels and longitudinal online-panel initiatives to monitor attitudinal changes over time. Major cross-national survey instruments have increasingly adopted the push-to-web mode, which leverages population registers or random sampling via mail or telephone to request online participation.
Our session should explore how surveys in different world regions have adapted in response to the pandemic and how current survey research aims for ongoing efforts to ensure unbiased data collection and high data quality in a rapidly changing environment. We especially welcome submissions focusing on:
- The Shift to Online Surveys: Examining the widespread adoption of web-based surveys and technological innovations, including mobile-friendly platforms and interactive features.
- Potential Representation Biases: Identifying sources of bias such as device effects, where differences in device types and internet access impact item and unit (non‑)response.
- Survey Design Adjustments: Strategies to enhance representation quality, including adaptive sampling techniques, oversampling underrepresented groups, and applying weighting adjustments to ensure representativeness.
- Ethical Considerations: Addressing heightened privacy concerns and the importance of maintaining public trust through transparent data practices and robust informed consent procedures, enhancing data protection and data integrity according to legal standards.
Session Organizers:
Wolfgang ASCHAUER, University of Salzburg, Austria, wolfgang.aschauer@sbg.ac.at
Martin WEICHBOLD, University of Salzburg, Austria, martin.weichbold@sbg.ac.at
Knut PETZOLD, Hochschule Zittau-Görlitz, Germany, knut.petzold@ku.de
2. Applications and Development of Factorial Surveys
Factorial surveys have become a common tool in social sciences to uncover the underlying factors influencing individuals’ judgments. In a factorial survey, individuals are presented with a set of fictitious units known as vignettes and are asked to rate them. Unlike traditional vignette-based studies, the fictitious combinations in factorial surveys are carefully selected to represent orthogonal combinations of characteristics, which are used to predict the rating tasks. Over the past 50 years, significant advancements have been made in data collection, design, presentation, and analysis techniques, among others, which have increased methodological debates in recent years.
This session attempts to gather methodological studies that contribute to the development of the tool, as well as innovative and substantive applications. We invite submissions about but not limited to the following themes in relation to factorial surveys:
• Visual presentation
• Realism and complexity of vignettes
• Factorial surveys in different survey modes
• Sampling
• Social disability
• Reporting standards
• Predictive validity with respect to human behavior
• Applications in the Global South
• Studying contemporary social issues with factorial surveys
We look forward to receiving submissions that showcase cutting-edge methodological advancements and novel applications of factorial surveys, contributing to the ongoing evolution of this versatile research tool.
Session Organizer:
Francisco OLIVOS, Lingnan University, Hong Kong, fjolivos@gmail.com
3. Boundaries in Process-Oriented Social Research
The concept of “boundary” has been explored in various perspectives in sociology, including symbolic, moral, cultural, and social boundaries. However, after Nobel Laureate, Paul Crutzen proposed the concept of Anthropocene, it has gained additional importance because of its central concept: “planetary boundaries” in the realm of atmospheric chemistry. In this new usage, it has become a time-sensitive concept, whereas it was previously mostly spatial. In this respect, it is important to discuss this concept from the viewpoint of process-oriented social research, which pays special attention to time. There will be several topics, such as the transformation process of boundaries of various types, and boundaries that determine whether to change or not because the process concept inevitably includes “change.” This session welcomes all types of papers investigating this area.
Session Organizer:
Fumiya ONAKA, Japan Women’s University, Japan, fonaka@fc.jwu.ac.jp
4. Building Data Collection Methods for Hard to Study Populations
This session focusses on research that explores, develops or tests structured data collection methods that are suitable for hard to study populations. These are populations like low literate people, people with cognitive limitations, (mental) health challenges, or subgroups with physical restraints like in hearing or speaking. They all have in common to be at greater risk of communicative, cognitive and/or motivational disabilities that may limit the application of standardized or structured data collection methods. As a result, these limitations may pose a threat to (survey) research validity and reliability. If alternative, appropriate methods are not developed and applied, such populations and subgroups continue to be under researched and data quality will remain hampered
While in the end the aim may be to create new methodology for structured or even standardized (survey) research, the focus of papers can be on theoretical, qualitative, quantitative, or mixed methods developments.
In this session, we welcome theoretical and empirical contributions on issues that are key to data collection in hard to study populations, like:
• Cognitive and communicative processes.
• Verbal and non-verbal behaviour.
• Sensitive topics and emotional burden.
• Power differences in research.
• Interactive aspects of data collection.
• Proxy and triad interviewing.
• Visual data collection methods.
• Aided recall measures.
• Timeline and Life History Calendar tools.
• Development of tools and instruments.
Hence this session invites papers dealing with innovative data collection approaches that seek to meet the challenges in collecting structured data from special populations.
Session Organizers:
Wander VAN DER VAART, University of Humanistic Studies, Netherlands, w.vandervaart@uvh.nl
Vanessa TORRES VAN GRINSVEN, Open Universiteit, Netherlands, vanessa.torresvangrinsven@ou.nl
5. Conducting Qualitative Research in Cross-Cultural, Multi-Lingual and Multi-Country Contexts
Conducting qualitative research is inherently challenging as it calls for finding a balance between compliance with methodological requirements and adaptability to fieldwork realities. Despite thorough preparation “at a desk”, qualitative research mostly “happens” in a field where the probability of unexpected is high and, realistically, unavoidable. Qualitative researchers often “insert” themselves into natural, uncontrolled environments, subjectivities of research participants and living contexts of researched phenomena. An important part of conducting qualitative research is being able to “react as you go” even if along the framework of methodology requirements, guidelines of a particular method and setup of research design.
Doing qualitative research in cross-cultural, multi-lingual and multi-country contexts produces an additional layer of challenges, from complex research logistics to a demanding analytical cycle. Researchers’ cultural sensitivity, language skills, ability to gain trust with research participants and respect for local communities gain crucial importance in cross-cultural research. It is likely that researchers encounter a wide variety of issues that might not be discussed in conventional research methodology literature, experiencing uncertainty and lack of guidance.
The session, therefore, invites researchers who have been involved in cross-cultural, multi-lingual and multi-country qualitative research to share their experiences, reflect upon the difficulties they encountered and discuss how they navigated their research decision-making.
Session Organizers:
Inga GAIZAUSKAITE, Lithuanian Centre for Social Sciences, Lithuania, inga.gaizauskaite@lstc.lt
Claire WAGNER, University of Pretoria, South Africa, claire.wagner@up.ac.za
6. Ethnographing Access to Rights in the Anthropocene
In the face of the global challenges posed by the Anthropocene, we are witnessing a crisis in national and international legislation, characterized both by the creation of new rights and the friction caused by the transfer of sovereignty from States to international jurisprudence, or, on the contrary, by their rigidity in applying international law. Against this backdrop, individuals and social groups on the fringes of the legislative arena are mobilizing various ethical, normative and legal frames of reference to assert their rights at local level. How do they secure their access to resources (social, political, environmental)? What are the effects of these multiple frames of reference on the production of rights? On collective mobilization, living together and citizenship?
This panel session aims to welcome contributions that take an empirical and qualitative approach to access to rights from a sociological perspective. The focus will be on contexts of legal pluralism, such as the coexistence of national and customary law in post-colonial areas, or of international law and national legislation. The methodological approaches may be applied in different ways, for example in the form of ‘judicial ethnographies’ analyzing interactional situations between justice professionals and litigants, or from the perspective of ‘ethnographies of law’, paying attention to the paths and ordinary social practices through which individuals and groups produce their rights, and litigate their cases.
Contributions may fall under one of the panel’s two headings: 1/”working for rights and securing access to resources”; 2/”seeking redress in the Anthropocene: the judicialization of causes”.
Session Organizers:
Lauriane DOS SANTOS, MSH-P UAR 2503 CNRS-UPF ; EASTCO, French Polynesia; Université de la Polynésie française (MSH-P-EASTCO) , French Polynesia, dossantos.lauriane@gmail.com
Leila DRIF, Maison des Sciences de l’Homme du Pacifique UAR 2503 CNRS | University of french Polynesia, French Polynesia; Institut Convergence Migration, France; french institute for the near east (IFPO), Lebanon, leiladrif@gmail.com
7. Exploring and Consolidating New Research Strategies in the Post-COVID-19 Era
The Covid-19 pandemic is considered one of the consequences of the Anthropocene and has been posing a series of practical limitations to social research from a methodological point of view. The pandemic has highlighted the need for agility, resilience, and creative problem-solving in the face of unexpected disruptions. The goal of this panel is to invite researchers to share their experiences, insights, and novel approaches that have emerged during these challenging times. We would like to discuss the solutions identified to overcome the pandemic challenges, the renewal of investigation practices, their limits and opportunities. We invite contributions in the form of research papers and case studies that address rethinking research methodologies, exploring alternative data collection and analysis techniques, and leveraging technology and digital platforms for research purposes.
This session encourages works approaching interdisciplinary approaches, promoting collaboration and knowledge exchange across disciplines, harnessing the power of interdisciplinary research to tackle complex issues, and identifying emerging research areas. Special attention is given to the role of transformative technologies, such as investigating the emerging technologies in research post-pandemic, exploring the potential of artificial intelligence and machine learning in data analysis, and harnessing virtual and augmented reality for remote research activities. Lastly, ethical considerations in research are encouraged, particularly addressing the ethical challenges posed by conducting research by emerging technologies, ensuring participant safety and privacy in data collection processes, and establishing guidelines for responsible and ethical research practices, including those related to virtual and augmented reality for remote research activities.
Session Organizers:
Alessandra DECATALDO, University of Milan Bicocca, Italy, alessandra.decataldo@unimib.it
Brunella FIORE, University of Milan-Bicocca, Italy, brunella.fiore@unimib.it
8. Future-Oriented Preferences: Methodological Challenges of Analyzing Transformative Issues
Pioneering, especially socially relevant, decisions about pressing issues of today require the consideration of possible, probable and desirable social developments and target states. For decision-makers in politics and business, understanding future preferences of the population is of crucial importance for predicting actors’ behavior (e.g., consumer behavior) to develop suitable measures and make well-founded (political) decisions that ensure long-term social welfare. Moreover, this challenge increases against the background of transformative change issues which are pointedly discussed as transitions in diverse sectors and their interplay as well.
Aligning to this empirical situation, there is the methodological challenge of how to identify future preferences for prevailing as well as preferences for upcoming issues in an empirically rich and methodologically sound manner. As the elicitation of future-oriented preferences cannot, in principle, follow a forecast mode, the discussion of how to overcome the hurdle of measuring future preferences turn into an eminently important research problem.
The objectives of this session are to discuss theoretical foundations for the measurement of future-oriented preferences as well as empirical approaches for the elicitation of future-oriented preferences. The session welcomes theoretical, conceptual and empirical contributions. In addition to isolated qualitative (e.g., focus group, qualitative interviews) and quantitative social science methods (e.g., discrete choice experiments, vignette studies), the combination of quantitative and qualitative methods in the sense of a mixed-methods approach or with computer-assisted simulations to investigate future-oriented preferences are very welcome.
Session Organizers:
Hawal SHAMON, Forschungszentrum Jülich, Germany, h.shamon@fz-juelich.de
Vanessa SCHMIEJA, Forschungszentrum Jülich, Germany, v.schmieja@fz-juelich.de
Stefan BÖSCHEN, RWTH Aachen, Germany, stefan.boeschen@humtec.rwth-aachen.de
9. Informed Consent: Successfully Gaining Linkage and Panel Consent
Due to legal or ethical reasons the success of linked panel surveys frequently rests on gaining two forms of respondents’ informed consent: Panel consent is needed to re-contact respondents for upcoming panel waves. Linkage consent is required to link survey data with auxiliary information (e.g., administrative data). Failure to obtain these consents reduces the analytical potential of surveys leading to only cross-sectional datasets without linkage. This session is devoted to improving knowledge about both forms of consent.
Research has focused on (the determinants of) survey participation and panel stability. Despite the importance of panel consent for panel stability, research about this form of consent is very scarce and has been neglected by research. This session invites papers with new (experimental) evidence of how to improve panel consent rates as well as studies that analyze the effects of asking for panel consent (e.g., effects on nonresponse). (Experimental) research about linkage consent has resulted in mixed findings about respondents` characteristics and survey design features. Though, linkage consent rates seem to depend on mode and the kind of data to be linked. Another aspect that has been considered is the wording of linkage requests (i.e., placement within the questionnaire and the framing (gain vs. loss)). Papers with new (experimental) evidence of how to improve linkage consent rates are welcome as well as studies that analyze the effects of asking for linkage consent (e.g., effects on nonresponse).
Session Organizer:
Sebastian HÜLLE, Institute for Employment Research (IAB), Germany, sebastian.huelle@iab.de
10. Issues of Measurement Quality in Standardized Surveys
Standardized surveys are a central pillar for data collection in social science. Despite the trend for online surveys in recent decades, more traditional survey modes are still being used frequently. Each of the survey modes comes with its pros and cons in terms of measurement quality, which is why mixed-mode surveys have become a useful alternative.
This session aims to promote the discussion of methodological advances in ensuring the measurement quality in surveys in single mode but also mixed-mode surveys as well as the usage of para and behavioral data for improving data quality. Contributions may cover but are not limited to the following research topics:
• Validity and reliability of measurement instruments
• Procedures and protocols to reduce (heterogeneity of) processing errors
• Effects of questionnaire design on respondents’ motivation during the survey
• Developments in the usage of para data for data quality checks
• Surveys and digital behavioral data
• Survey experiments
• Improvements in tackling item nonresponse
• Interviewer effects and coping strategies
• Application of mixed-mode designs to improve measurement quality
Session Organizers:
Hawal SHAMON, Forschungszentrum Jülich, Germany, h.shamon@fz-juelich.de
Vanessa SCHMIEJA, Forschungszentrum Jülich, Germany, v.schmieja@fz-juelich.de
11. Personal Branding for Professors-Researchers
The purpose of personal branding of professor-researcher panel is to discuss and develop knowledge of the relevant elements that can improve personal and professional skills in various fields, particularly in sociological field.
Many themes can be addressed as:
- Personal branding of professors-researchers;
- Personal skills development of professors-researchers;
- Professional skills development of professors-researchers;
- Professors-researchers charisma;
- Presentation of the best researchers in sociology science;
- Storytelling of successful researchs in sociology science;
- Etc.
Submitted papers are expected to cover theoretical concepts, standards, ongoing research projects and innovative ideas or solutions To resolve problematic issues.
Session Organizers:
Mounia CHEHBOUNE, Sultan Moulay Slimane University, Morocco, cmounya@gmail.com
Mouna HILMI, Mohamed 5 University, Morocco, mouna.hilmi@fsjes-agdal.um5.ac.ma
Sanâa BOUAROUROU, Mohamed 5 University, Morocco, s.bouarourou@um5r.ac.ma
12. Researching Young People’s Place(s) in the World: Geographical, Temporal and Affective Self-Positionings
How do children and young people locate themselves in the world? What knowledge and which emotions do they associate with certain spaces? Such questions become particularly pressing in the context of the Anthropocene because it is increasingly being questioned which places will be habitable (in the future). Questions of self-localization also arise in the context of family migration experiences or images of distant places that are charged in a specific way. The ways children make sense of and construct different localities have been studied as “emotional geographies” (Blazek 2018). In this sense spaces are not understood as static entities, but as being produced, reinterpreted and adopted by subjects – including children and youths.
In this session, we would like to discuss the question of how the local and global self-positioning of adolescents can be methodically captured and methodologically justified. We welcome contributions from scholars who
• work with methods such as mapping tools (e.g., mental mapping or geographical mapping tools), interviews, pictures/visualizations or a combination thereof.
• discuss the appropriateness of such approaches for research with children.
• offer conceptualizations of “spaces”, “places” and “localities”.
• approach questions on the temporal (present and future) and geographical (near and far places) dimensions of young people’s self-positionings and/or on the affective dimension
(rejection of and attraction to certain places; danger zones; dream-places), as well as the knowledge about certain spaces.
• discuss questions of social (in)justice regarding young people’s temporal, geographical and affective self-positionings.
Session Organizers:
Alexandra KOENIG, University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany, alexandra.koenig@uni-due.de
Jessica SCHWITTEK, University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany, jessica.schwittek@uni-due.de
13. Researching into/through Emerging Technologies: Epistemological and Methodological Issues
The recent development of emerging technologies (ET), such as Artificial Intelligence, Digital Twins, and High-Performance Computing, affects sciences and society. The interest in emerging technology in the social sciences is twofold. Firstly, ET are becoming interesting social research objects; secondly, they are being employed as research instruments for data collection, organization and analysis.
However, several epistemological challenges need to be addressed. How the development or usage of ET should be studied? What methods can be useful for such objects of research? What are the main epistemological challenges of researching ET and their agency? What methodological challenges need to be faced for an effective use of ET in social research? How do traditional questions of validity, sampling, inference, etc. apply to social research through ET?
The session welcomes abstracts that present, empirical research on specific ET or show possibilities for implementing ET in social research practices.
Session Organizers:
Suania ACAMPA, University of Naples Federico II, Italy, suania.acampa@unina.it
Francesco AMATO, University of Naples Federico II, Italy, francesco.amato2@unina.it
Mattia DE ANGELIS, University of Naples Federico II, Italy, mattia.deangelis@unina.it
14. Teaching Qualitative Methods in the Anthropocene
There is extensive literature on research methodology and methods, outlining the essence, the principles and procedures of social research. However, there is much less discussion about teaching research methods, particularly in the context of qualitative research. The nature of qualitative research manifests through flexibility and subjectivity; its process and procedures are less structured than in quantitative research, and a researcher plays a more active role in data collection, analysis and interpretation. The field work is prone to unexpected challenges which might be difficult to predict in the planning stage. The era of the Anthropocene also brings a different epistemological lens to how we generate knowledge calling for complexity, multiplicity, inclusiveness, flexibility and justice. Therefore, how do we ensure that these principles are served in the way that we construct knowledge through qualitative methods and how do we teach qualitative research that equips students to deal with the concerns of the Anthropocene?
The session invites academics and/or researchers who teach/and or train for qualitative research to share best practices of teaching, reflect upon the difficulties they or students (future researchers) encounter and discuss innovative solutions that could enhance teaching and learning for social justice.
Session Organizers:
Claire WAGNER, University of Pretoria, South Africa, claire.wagner@up.ac.za
Inga GAIZAUSKAITE, Lithuanian Centre for Social Sciences, Lithuania, inga.gaizauskaite@lstc.lt