Welcome to the official website of the ESA RN 21 mid-term conference "Potentials and Limits of Quantitative Research in the Social Sciences", which will be held in Cracow (Poland) in 3rd - 6th of October, 2018.
The mid-term conference aims at an overview of the potentials of quantitative research as well as a critical assessment of its technical, epistemological, and ethical boundaries. Thus, we welcome papers and panels about the following topics, which are of course by no means exhaustive: the internet as a new data-source; mobile communication as a device for data-gathering: activity-tracking, bio-medical monitoring, automated diaries, GPS data etc.; the new potentials of cheap high-speed computing; Epistemological questions: explaining and understanding social reality in quantitative studies; Mixed-methods as an alternative: taking the best out of two worlds?; theoretical and methodological approaches of mixed-methods research, etc.; the issue of comparability; defining new units of analysis beyond “methodological nationalism”; quantitative approaches with regard to applied topics; specific challenges with regard to “hard-to-reach” groups; ethical questions of new methods of data-gathering; reviving traditional methods.
Please submit your suggested contribution (individual presentation or session proposal with at least three presentations), abstract submission ends 15th of March, 2018.