Universität Mannheim: MAJOURNALS
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393 research outputs found
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How information campaigns (can) influence migration decisions: Findings from several studies in Nigeria.
Full text linkSeit der sogenannten Migrationskrise 2015 werden als Mittel der Europäischen Außenpolitik verstärkt Informationskampagnen zu Migration in potenziellen Herkunftsländern eingesetzt. Sie sollen das Bewusstsein für irreguläre Migration bei potentiellen Migrant*innen steigern und entsprechendes Verhalten verringern. Die Politik der Migrationsinformationskampagnen ist umstritten – bezüglich der Art an Informationen, ihrer Effektivität, aber auch ihrer Umsetzung aus ethischer Perspektive. Können derartige Kampagnen junge Erwachsene zum Umdenken bewegen? Und falls ja, wie?Since the so-called migration crisis in 2015, European foreign policy has increasingly used migration information campaigns to raise awareness among potential migrants about the topic of irregular migration and to reduce their intentions to migrate irregularly. However, this policy is controversial – regarding the type of information conveyed, its effectiveness, and its implementation from an ethical perspective. Can such campaigns make young adults think differently? And if so, how
The Impact of Presentation Format on Conjoint Designs: A Replication and an Extension
Full text linkIn recent years, conjoint experiments have been in vogue across the social sciences. A reason for the conjoint experiments’ popularity is that they allow researchers to estimate the causal effects of many components of stimuli simultaneously. However, for conjoint experiments to produce valid results, respondents need to be able to process and understand the wide range of dimensions presented to them in the experiment. If the information processing is too demanding or too complicated, respondents are likely to turn to satisficing strategies, leading to poorer data quality and subsequently decreasing the researcher’s ability to make accurate causal inferences. One factor that may lead to the adoption of satisficing strategies is the presentation format used for the conjoint experiment (i.e., presenting the information within a text paragraph or a table). In the present paper, a direct replication of the single conjoint presentation format experiment described in Shamon, Dülmer, and Giza’s (2019) paper in Sociological Methods & Research is presented, and extending their work to paired conjoint experiment. The results of the direct replication showed that respondents evaluated the questionnaire more favorably when reading the table format but were, on the other hand, less likely to participate in subsequent panel waves. Albeit the number of break-offs, refusals, and non-responses did not differ between the two formats, respondents who saw the table format evaluated the scenarios with more consistency and less dimension reduction, thus favoring the table presentation format. For paired conjoint experiments, the presentation format did not affect survey evaluations or panel participation but the table format heavily outperformed the text format on every data quality measure except for dimension reduction. Conceptually, albeit not directly replicating the findings in Shamon, Dülmer, and Giza (2019), the present manuscript concludes that the table format appears preferable over the text format for conjoint experimental designs
Improving Anchoring Vignette Methodology in Health Surveys with Image Vignettes
Full text linkThe anchoring vignette method is designed to improve comparisons across population groups and adjust for differential item functioning (DIF). Vignette questions are brief descriptions of hypothetical persons for respondents to rate. Although this method has been adopted widely in health surveys, there remain challenges. In particular, vignettes are complex, increasing survey time and respondent burden. Further, the assumptions underlying this method are often violated. To overcome such challenges, this paper introduces an innovative technique, namely image anchoring vignettes, conveying vignette information with varying health levels in images. We conducted a cross-cultural experimental study to examine the performance of image and standard text vignettes in terms of response time, how well they satisfy the assumptions, and their DIF-adjusting quality using a confirmatory factor analysis. The study revealed that respondents can better differentiate the intensity levels of the three vignettes in the image vignette condition, compared to text vignettes. Response consistency assumption appears to be better satisfied for image vignettes than text vignettes. Using well-designed image vignettes greatly reduces survey time without losing the DIF-adjustment quality, indicating the potential of image vignettes to improve overall efficiencies of the anchoring vignette method. Improving vignette equivalence (i.e., minimizing different interpretations of vignettes by different groups), remains a challenge for both text and image vignettes. This study generates new insights into the design and use of image anchoring vignettes
Testing the Effects of Automated Navigation in a General Population Web Survey
Full text linkThis study investigates how an auto-forward design, where respondents navigate through a web survey automatically, affects response times and navigation behavior in a long mixed-device web survey. We embedded an experiment in a health survey administered to the general population in The Netherlands to test the auto-forward design against a manual-forward design. Analyses are based on detailed paradata that keep track of the respondents’ behavior in navigating the survey. We find that an auto-forward design decreases completion times and that questions on pages with automated navigation are answered significantly faster compared to questions on pages with manual navigation. However, we also find that respondents use the navigation buttons more in the auto-forward condition compared to the manual-forward condition, largely canceling out the reduction in survey duration. Furthermore, we also find that the answer options ‘I don’t know’ and ‘I rather not say’ are used just as often in the auto-forward condition as in the manual-forward condition, indicating no differences in satisficing behavior. We conclude that auto-forwarding can be used to reduce completing times, but we also advice to carefully consider mixing manual and auto-forwarding within a survey
The Market Value of Corporate Social Performance in BRICS Countries: Differential Results Based on Panel Data Methods
Full text linkAlthough the causal effect of social performance on financial performance is a critical issue for companies and their stakeholders, there has been no consistent econometric approach in the relevant literature to examine this relationship yet. From this point of view, the main motivation of this study is twofold: first, it aims to reveal the differential results of static and dynamic panel data methods used to estimate the impact of corporate social performance (CSP) on corporate financial performance (CFP). Second, in order to take the initiative for a consistent and reliable estimation method of the causal relationship between CSP and CFP, this study aims at drawing attention to the challenges of system generalized method of moments, which is suggested as an efficient method to solve the endogeneity problem in dynamic models. To this end, the impact of CSP on CFP for a sample of BRICS countries was analyzed through both static and dynamic panel data specifications. The main results reveal that static panel data models estimated with pooled OLS, random and fixed effects result in inconsistent and biased parameter estimates. This study discusses that although the two-step system GMM is suggested as a reliable method to deal with the endogeneity issue, some critical specifications should be considered while utilizing this method to achieve robust and efficient results
Multimodal self- and other-positioning on Wikipedia user pages
Full text linkIn the analysis of digital communication, there is a growing interest in how people construct their identities through interaction with each other. Multimodal self- and other-positioning can be seen as a key to the analysis of identity in the framework of interaction analysis. But so far, the focus of many linguistic studies has clearly been on the microanalysis of the purely verbal dimension of small episodes of identity construction in digital communication. Consequently, there is little empirical examination of how self- and other-positioning is shaped discursively, mediated institutionally and realized multimodally. Analysing Wikipedia user pages, the paper follows a multimodal approach that advocates at the same time the integration of discourse and interaction analytic aspects of positioning.
So far, the user pages as a locus of (self-) positioning in Wikipedia are completely underexamined in the constantly growing field of linguistic and media-scientific analyses of the collaborative online encyclopaedia, although self-representation can be understood as a prerequisite for participation in digital communication. On the wiki-supported user pages, engaged Wikipedia authors permanently elaborate on their online personas. Simultaneously they negotiate roles and positions in interaction on the corresponding user talk pages. The overall goal is to achieve powerful positions to have a high impact on the collaborative content production in the digital discourses of the online encyclopaedia. Three Wikipedia-specific multimodal resources are considered for the outlined analysis: when constructing identities-in-interaction Wikipedia authors make use of the Babel User Templates, they grant digital prizes and distinctions, and they integrate images on their user pages, which they borrow from the huge image repositories of Wikimedia Commons
A Population Based Regional Dynamic Microsimulation of Germany: The MikroSim Model
Full text linkMicrosimulation models are widely used to evaluate the potential effects of different policies on social indicators. Most microsimulation models in use operate on a national level, disregarding regional variations. We describe the construction of a national microsimulation model for Germany, accounting for local variations in each of the more than 10,000 communities in Germany. The database used and the mechanisms implementing the population dynamics are described. Finally, the further development of the database and microsimulation programs are outlined, which will contribute towards a research lab that will be made available to the wider scientific community
Das Stadtarchiv Waiblingen: Das Archiv ist wie eine Schachtel Pralinen – man weiß nie was man (noch alles) findet
No full textIn diesen "Grüßen aus dem Lesesaal" stellt die Archivarin Tanja Wolf das Stadtarchiv Waiblingen und die Geschichte der Stadt vor
Coding Text Answers to Open-ended Questions: Human Coders and Statistical Learning Algorithms Make Similar Mistakes
Full text linkText answers to open-ended questions are often manually coded into one of several predefined categories or classes. More recently, researchers have begun to employ statistical models to automatically classify such text responses. It is unclear whether such automated coders and human coders find the same type of observations difficult to code or whether humans and models might be able to compensate for each other’s weaknesses. We analyze correlations between estimated error probabilities of human and automated coders and find: 1) Statistical models have higher error rates than human coders 2) Automated coders (models) and human coders tend to make similar coding mistakes. Specifically, the correlation between the estimated coding error of a statistical model and that of a human is comparable to that of two humans. 3) Two very different statistical models give highly correlated estimated coding errors. Therefore, a) the choice of statistical model does not matter, and b) having a second automated coder would be redundant
Prosopographie als Methode
Full text linkDie Prosopographie ist eine geeignete Methode, um komplexe soziale Gruppen zu untersuchen. Am Beispiel der Straßburger Zünfte wird gezeigt, wie mit Hilfe einer prosopographischen Datenbank auch bei unvollständiger Datenlage, wie sie die mittelalterlichen Quellen bieten, grundlegende neue Erkenntnisse möglich sind. In Kombination mit anderen Methoden, wie der historisch-kritischen Methode oder der Netzwerkforschung, lassen sich Missverständnisse der älteren Forschung korrigieren