As the European Union grows together we are faced with an increasing number of European surveys and statistics that rely on national instruments or questionnaires. We lack valid instruments with functional equivalence that allow international comparative analysis. This problem is especially important in the case of demographic and socio-economic variables. The usual practice in comparative social research is to work with national questionnaires and classifications thereby making meaningful comparisons questionable. To overcome these problems this book offers rules of comparison, tested...

Survey Methodology is becoming a more structured field of research, deserving of more and more academic attention. The SAGE Handbook of Survey Methodology explores both the increasingly scientific endeavour of surveys and their growing complexity, as different data collection modes and information sources are combined.

The handbook takes a global approach, with a team of international experts looking at local and national specificities, as well as problems of cross-national, comparative survey research. The chapters are organized into seven major sections, each of...

Mit der Aufmerksamkeit, die das Thema Religion in der Offentlichkeit seit einigen Jahren erfahrt, kann auch die Religionssoziologie einen neuen Aufschwung verzeichnen. Das modernisierungs- und sakularisierungstheoretische Fundament der Teildisziplin ist angesichts von Entwicklungen innerhalb und ausserhalb westlicher Gesellschaften zunehmend in Frage gestellt worden. Dieser Band gibt einen Uberblick uber aktuelle Trends der Religionssoziologie. Neben der grundlegenden Erorterung handlungs-, organisations- und gesellschaftstheoretischer Fragen des religiosen Wandels in modernen...