Head of project: Prof. Dr. Stefanie Eifler

Why do individuals seek advantages at the expense of others? Why do they take or keep objects of value they neither own nor deserve, if the routines of everyday life suddenly offer them a chance to do so? – The project „Zusammenleben in der Stadt“ is a continuation and an expansion of the project „Kriminalität im Alltag“ (Catalog of the University Library of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt). The aim is to specify what influences social situations may have on an agent’s decision-making, which can be either “criminal” or “prosocial” and to empirically analyze these influences with reference to different sociological levels. Based on the “Model of Frame-Selection”, the institutional anomie theory and the theory of social disorganization in particular are integrated into the frame of reference of a macro-micro-macro model of sociological explanations and related to the selection of criminal and prosocial action. Looking at an example where there is an opportunity to not return or hand in a found object and another opportunity to assist someone in an everyday matter, this integrative approach is subjected to empirical analysis. For a more exhaustive documentation of our methods, please see the series Eichstätter Beiträge zur Soziologie.

Head of project: Dr. Heinz Leitgöb

By now it has become an established fact in survey methodological research, that in standardized surveys the mode of questioning exerts a relevant influence on the quality of the realized data, especially in the case of questions on sensitive areas. The occurrence of systematic differences between mode-specific estimators of relevant population parameters (e.g. offense-specific crime rates in surveys on self-reported delinquency) is consequently referred to as a 'mode effect'. According to the 'broad definition' presented by Kury, Guzy & Leitgöb (2015, p. 80), this effect can be described as the totality of all (i) measurement-related and (ii) representation-related differences between the individual survey methods. While (i) refers to the survey process or the response behavior of the participating respondents, (ii) comprises those survey-related mechanisms that result in overrandom divergences in the composition of the population and the realized sample (e.g. non-coverage, non-response).

In order to arrive at robust empirical evidence for a well-founded advancement of survey and measurement instruments, we must analytically dissect mode effects into their measurement-related and representation-related components. Such a procedure based on econometric principles has been proposed by Leitgöb (2017).

 So far, however, in the absence of the necessary empirical data, a serious examination of the application potential of the procedure is not yet feasible. For this reason, this project funded by the Research Service Center at the University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt through the PROFOR funding aims at conducting a mode comparing survey experiment and subsequently at applying the composition procedure to the generated data. The survey focuses on sensitive characteristics typically included in criminological victimization surveys (e.g. fear of crime, specific victimization experiences).

Bibliography:
Leitgöb, H. (2017). Ein Verfahren zur Dekomposition von Mode-Effekten in eine mess- und eine repräsentationsbezogene Komponente. In S. Eifler & F. Faulbaum (Hrsg.), Methodische Probleme von Mixed-Mode-Ansätzen in der Umfrageforschung. Schriftenreihe der Arbeitsgemeinschaft Sozialwissenschaftlicher Institute (ASI) (S. 51–98). VS Verlag:Wiesbaden.
Kury, H., Guzy, N. & Leitgöb, H. (2015). Effekte des Erhebungsmodus. In N. Guzy, C. Birkel & R. Mischkowitz (Hrsg.), Viktimisierungsbefragungen in Deutschland. Volume 2: Methodik und Methodologie (S. 77–105). Bundeskriminalamt: Wiesbaden.

Head of project: Prof. Dr. Stefanie Eifler; Julia Weymeirsch, M.Sc.

Everyday life in Germany has changed significantly since 11. March 2020, with the official declaration of the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO). The subsequent (mostly governmental) measures to combat the pandemic have ranged from hygiene measures for businesses, schools and restaurants to general contact restrictions in public and private spaces.

The arguments people use in public discussions about a possible easing of the restrictive measures most often pertain to individual hardships and fates and the direct and indirect economic consequences of the pandemic. However, the social consequences of the pandemic - both for individual agents and for social coexistence - sometimes remain unclear.

The focus of the planned project is to survey attitudes and acceptance towards government measures in connection with the Covid19 pandemic. In it, we will be looking at how socio-spatial structures as well as personal affectedness can influence individuals in a way that they might decide to observe or not to observe restrictive anti-pandemic measures. The perception of the environment of the immediate neighborhood plays a special part. Against the background of a pandemic situation, questions concerning the conditionality of social trust and social cohesion in particular will be investigated. The project proposes to investigate the importance of neighborhood perception for rule violations and to systematically analyze the underlying mechanisms of action.

Head of project: Prof. Dr. Stefanie Eifler, Adrian Jakob

Sociological approaches that try to explain actions, make use of theoretical frameworks to analyze the background for decision-making. The challenge in this is that people as research objects do not act according to physical laws. Accordingly, the mechanisms behind decisions to act can be explained with a variety of theoretical approaches, each with a different focus. A good theory must have as few assumptions as possible and at the same time provide explanations for actions as precisely as possible. One particular aspect of action is deviant and criminal behavior that violates formal and informal norms. The goal of applicable theories is to analyze the conditions of these actions and to formulate generally valid approaches that can help understand the underlying mechanisms.

Decisions to act are based on the perceived circumstances and characteristics of the situations in which they are made. Actions taken in the context of one situation might not be taken, or taken differently, by the same individual in different conditions. Accordingly, the situation in which a crime is committed is of vital importance when explaining criminal actions. However, considering the situation alone cannot provide a satisfactory answer to the question of why there are individual differences in the choice of an alternative course of action. For this purpose, further variables have to be taken into account.

Self-control is one of the constructs that is supposed to explain individual differences in the propensity to commit a crime. This construct has been used in sociology for several decades now. Thus, it is not a new discovery, but it has brought about a variety of more extensive research efforts. There has also been research on self-control in related disciplines such as psychology and social psychology. This differentiated research activity has led to several conceptions of the term, as well as embedding it in different theoretical contexts. The meaning in terms of content as well as the effect of self-control is as inconsistent as the use of the term itself (e.g. effortful control, self-regulation, ego-depletion, willpower).

The aim of this study is to examine a selection of constructs that are referred to as self-control and to compare their effects on the basis of action theory. We use vignettes to sketch everyday situations in which there are - to varying degrees - opportunities for committing crimes. We then separately examine the effect of the variants of self-control based on the perception of the situation and the subsequent intention to act. Thus, we hope to fill in the knowledge gap regarding the effect the different variants of self-control might have depending on the conditions of the situation.

PhD project Adrian Jakob

Head of project: Prof. Dr. Stefanie Eifler

Sub-project of "Sicherheit und Privatheit im öffentlichen Raum” – Safety and Privacy in Public Spaces

Head of project: Prof. Dr. Stefanie Eifler, Dr. Heinz Leitgöb

Sub-project of "Mode Effects in the Surveying of Sensitive Items (MESSI)"

Head of project: Prof. Dr. Stefanie Eifler, Dr. Knut Petzold

Everyday coexistence in modern, diversified societies is regulated to a considerable extent by informal social norms. For example, norms such as right-hand-driving help solve problems that would otherwise ensue when coordinating road traffic, and norms of fairness regulate cooperative behavior in everyday life. However, since compliance with a social norm comes at a cost to the individual, in the absence of intrinsic motivation the norm must be enforced via sanctions, which also come at a cost. This raises the question of what conditions can promote the enforcement of social norms.

This enforcement is often studied with the help of laboratory and field experiments in which real behavior is observed in response to prior norm violations. However, for many sociological hypotheses, such designs are not feasible either for ethical reasons or practical considerations pertaining to the set-up of the survey. Therefore, survey data from large-scale surveys and survey-experimental research designs are also in use. However, a major drawback in studying the validity and enforcement of social norms using surveys is that we can only measure behavioral intentions as reported by the study subject themselves. All the previously conducted validation studies have measured intentions to act via the method of vignettes and then compared them to unobtrusively observed real-world behavior. However, these studies have only looked at compliance with social norms and have yielded inconclusive findings to boot.

The present study aims to contribute to filling this research gap by examining the conditions of informal norm enforcement in both field and vignette experiments and then comparing the results. We use scenarios that are apt to specifically capture status effects in norm enforcement in everyday life. These are variants of the well-known honking experiment, in which the conditions of enforcement of formal and informal norms in road traffic and in the subway vary. If the field and vignette experiments are genuine experiments in which no bias due to unobserved heterogeneity is to be expected in the course of manipulation and randomization, their comparability at a higher level must first be established by statistical analysis. Initial analyses reveal both differences and similarities in the results obtained.