Survey research in pilot-municipalities projects |
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| Coordinator 1 | Dr Andreas Hartung (University of Kaiserslautern) |
| Coordinator 2 | Professor Annette Spellerberg (University of Kaiserslautern) |
| Coordinator 3 | Mr Benjamin Stefan (University of Kaiserslautern) |
Working in and with pilot municipalities is a well-accepted approach to study specific populations (older people, refugees, etc.) and to develop research-led recommendations in various practice-oriented areas. Focusing on a few communities allows for in-depth research in local contexts and close cooperation with local stakeholders. Surveys within the communities are one of the central instruments in such projects. They help to gather information and to evaluate solutions the project aims at. In transdisciplinary projects, they are used to take into account the needs and demands of the target groups (e.g. climate adaptation measures, transport transition or local volunteering).
This session addresses challenges of survey research in pilot municipalities. We invite contributions to the following thematic areas:
• Comparability of survey data taken from single pilot municipalities: Surveys in the local context are often subject to singular (administrative) decisions of organisational and technical nature (sampling, time window, target groups). Therefore, we are interested in concepts and techniques of comparing survey data taken from participating communities.
• Combining surveys with data from complementary sources: municipalities can provide various data, e.g. geodata, that can be linked to surveys. Furthermore, research in pilot municipalities is usually interdisciplinary, and survey data need to be integrated with data produced in other areas. We invite contributions that present application examples for technical aspects of these procedures.
• Generalisation of project results: recommendations developed in pilot projects are intended for broad implementation. Therefore, we are interested in ways of representative selection of the participating municipalities as well as further conceptual and data-driven technics of result transferability.
With this session, we want to encourage a discussion about survey research in pilot municipalities and outline the distinctiveness of this approach, e.g. close cooperation with municipalities, inter- and transdisciplinarity and intensive use of complementary data sources