Social scientists have ignored biological constraints of human behavior for a long time almost completely. If prediction of behavior is considered as essential for a social science. The neglect of any variable, which might influence human behavior, is hardly justified. Therefore, this paper...

As in other societal realms also in research, science, and development governments and parliaments increasingly have to legitimize their actions and want to base their future activities on informed decisions. Consequently, performance measures, benchmarking, comparative analysis, "foresight...

Family policy gained considerable relevance which is reflected by the current public attention to family issues. In regard to many recommendations of the KVI in 2001 improvements can be reported which family research profited from in a considerable way. However, pertaining to quality and content...

In recent years, considerable progress has been made in improving the data infrastructure for fertility and morality researchers in Germany. Several large scale data sets have been made available through the research data centers: the micro-censuses of the 1970s and 1980s, the censuses of the...

Mass media are defind as media which have their proper program and constitute their own audience. Mass media research, accordingly, deals with the production of programs and the consumption of the audience. For both perspectives, research topics are justified, data sources are introduced, and...

Access to sensitive micro data should be provided using remote access data enclaves. These enclaves should be built to facilitate the productive, high-quality usage of microdata. In other words, they should support a collaborative environment that facilitates the development and exchange of...

Many environmental problems are large scale in terms of geographical units and long-term with regard to time. We therefore find a coincidence of different causes and impacts that qualify the interplay between humans and nature as highly uncertain ("transparency challenge"). In consequence we see...

Subjective indicators have been proven to possess predictive power for a large array of social and economic outcomes. However, most of these measures face serious psychometric shortcomings, namely that the items used are not psychometrically investigated. Further, for the assessment of one and...

The term "culture" is notorious for the multitude of its meanings. This expertise strictly focuses on culture in terms of the arts. We adopt a sociological as well as an economic perspective. Research questions are subdivided into three spheres of action: artistic production and its...

A new generation of data sets became available recently in the research data centres of the German statistical offices. These new data combine information for firms gathered in different surveys (or from other sources) that could not be analyzed jointly before. This paper offers a short...