Welcome to the homepage of the sociology group

Sociological research and teaching at the TU Kaiserslautern is based on empirical and analytical sociology. Analytical sociology is based on

• the formulation of precise theories to explain social phenomena
• a theoretical foundation based on individual decisions
• a focus on social mechanisms
• the formulation of testable hypotheses
• the empirical testing of hypothesis using quantitative data analysis
• the application of suitable research designs for causal inference

We teach our students the theoretical and methodological tools to conduct their own research. Students learn to work on sociological research questions and to conduct empirical analyses. It is thus necessary that students have an interest in sociological research questions but also in mathemathical and statistical methods. For applied data analysis in teaching we mainly use the software package R. We thus recommend our students to aquire the necessary programming skills early in the academic career. In collaboration with the chair for empirical research methods, we therefore offer the respective courses.

Professor for sociology and social structure analysis

Prof. Dr. Henning Best

Junior Professor for applied sociology

Jun.-Prof. Dr. Volker Ludwig