Organizational data describe central characteristics of organizations, their internal structures and processes as well as their behavior as corporate actors in different social and economic contexts. Firm and enterprise data are the most frequently used type of organizational data, but there is...

High-quality data from large-scale surveys provide a solid basis for outstanding research in the social sciences. Because of the unique demands of survey measurement in terms of the resources and skills required, it should be viewed as a specific sector of the research data infrastructure. In...

Online surveys and interviews, the observations of chat rooms or online games, data mining, knowledge discovery in databases (KDD), collecting biomarkers, employing biometrics, using RFID technology - even as implants in the human body - and other related processes all seem to be more promising,...

The availability of well-educated researchers is necessary for the fruitful analysis of social and economic data. The increased data offer made possible by the creation of the Research Data Centers (RDCs) has resulted in an increased demand for PhD students at the master's or Diplom levels....

New statistical methods have been developed for the longer-term storage of microdata. These methods must comply, however, with the fundamental right to informational self-determination and the legal regulations imposed by the Federal Constitutional Court. Thus it is crucial to develop effective...

The topic of this paper is access to and documentation of survey data financed through public funds. We distinguish between four types of publicly financed survey data: (1) Academic survey data from the national or international research infrastructures; (2) data from DFG projects or similarly...

"Time-use statistics offer a unique tool for exploring a wide range of policy concerns including social change; division of labour; allocation of time for household work; the estimation of the value of household production; transportation; leisure and recreation; pension plans; and health-care...

This paper evaluates the German, UK, and US approaches to dealing with research ethics in the social sciences. It focuses 1) on the extent to which these research ethic frameworks protect the key rights of research subjects and 2) the extent to to which they take into account the methodology and...

To our knowledge, no comprehensive, interdisciplinary initiatives have been taken to examine the role of genetic variants on patient-reported quality-of-life outcomes. The overall objective of this paper is to describe the establishment of an international and interdisciplinary consortium, the...

Empirical data can be characterized by a precise location in space and time. An estimated 80% of all data holds such a spatio-temporal reference and is termed geodata. This paper starts with the question: What is the additional benefit for socio-economic sciences using geodata and the spatial...