Vom 10. bis 12. September 2025 findet zum zweiten Mal die Konferenz MethodsNET in Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgien, statt. Organisiert wird die Konferenz unter anderem von der Katholischen Universität Löwen (UCLouvain) und vom GESIS – Leibniz-Institut für Sozialwissenschaften. Die Veranstaltung bringt internationale Expert:innen für Forschungsmethoden und ihre Anwender:innen sowie Lernende aus verschiedenen Disziplinen und Karrierestationen zusammen, um sich über aktuelle Entwicklungen, Ansätze und Projekte auszutauschen.
Dr. Marco Wähner, wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter im Programm „Research Data & Methods“ am CAIS, präsentiert seine Forschungsergebnisse unter dem Titel „Modeling Individual Choices in Online Participation: The Use of Stated Preference Experiments in Social Science Research“ am Donnerstag, 11. September, im Rahmen des Konferenzpanels „Modeling Choice in Society“ (08:30 bis 10:00 Uhr). Dabei stellt er die Ergebnisse eines Stated-Preference-Experiments vor und erläutert die verwendete Methode im Detail.
Abstract
In social science research, there is strong interest in explaining individual decisions: where people live, how they travel, or which political party they support. This presentation offers a methodological contribution to studying such decisions through stated preference experiments (SPE) and the application of discrete decision models, using online political participation as an example. It presents the design and results of an SPE conducted among students (n = 203). While factorial surveys are well established in sociology, with robust findings on reliability and validity (Auspurg et al. 2009; Wallander 2009), SPEs remain less commonly applied in social sciences (Liebe and Meyerhoff 2021). In SPEs, respondents choose their preferred option from various alternatives defined by differing attributes. Discrete choice models estimate the separate effects of these attributes on choices, based on random utility theory (McFadden 1986), which posits a utility function with systematic (attribute-based) and random components. The appeal of discrete choice models lies in their alignment with rational actor theory and statistical modeling (Liebe and Meyerhoff 2021), distinguishing them from conjoint analysis (Louviere et al. 2010). The example application explores motivations for online political participation. Students were presented with varying conditions for participating in a consultation process to assess whether motives differ across social groups. The paper further discusses the validity and reliability of the method, along with challenges, potential applications, and future research directions.
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