Ongoing and completed Projects

Cooperation Partner: Street newspaper ‘Megaphon’ – an initiative of Caritas Graz-Seckau
Duration: November 2025 – June 2026
Project Leads: Matthias Penker and Markus Hadler in cooperation with the street newspaper ‘Megaphon’ – an initiative of Caritas Graz-Seckau

Project Description: As part of a collaborative project, the Center for Social Research is supporting the street newspaper ‘Megaphon’ in conducting a quantitative readership survey. The newspaper enables people in precarious circumstances to earn their own income and promotes their social inclusion. It is currently sold directly on the streets in Graz and several other towns in Styria by around 270 people experiencing social hardship. To mark the newspaper’s 30th anniversary, the editorial team aims to learn more about the purchase motives and the socio-demographic composition of its readership: Who reads the Megaphon? How often and for what reasons is it purchased? What role does the Social Initiative play? The survey is being conducted using a mixed-mode design: employing both an online questionnaire and a paper questionnaire. The results will provide an empirical foundation for the newspaper’s further development. Key findings will be presented to the public in a future issue.

Funding: Ministry of Social Affairs
Duration: October 2024-July 2026
Project Leads: Markus Hadler, Beate Klösch and Klaus Wegleitner

Project Description: Over the next few years, the Elisabethinen Hospital in Graz will expand palliative care in the former VinziDorf Hospice, a hospice facility for homeless people, as part of the "Himmelshafen" project. By providing additional care services, the aim is to improve the living conditions as well as the end-of-life circumstances of structurally vulnerable groups who otherwise struggle to find adequate support, for exemple due to addiction or mental health problems. Furthermore, intensive public relations work is intended to raise awareness of the realities of homeless people's lives among the general population and ensure the long-term sustainability of the facility through donations, sponsorships and volunteers. The project is intended to serve as a model for other organizations and to provide suggestions for the conceptual expansion of graduated hospice and palliative care in Austria. The Center for Social Research is conducting the accompanying impact evaluation.

Funding: Federal Ministry of Education, Science and Research
Duration: 1.3.2023-29.2.2027
Project Leads: Markus Hadler and Anja Eder
Project Partners: Johann Bacher and Dimitri Prandner (JKU Linz), Wolfgang Aschauer (Paris-Lodron University Salzburg), Caroline Berghammer (ÖAW) and (University of Vienna)

Project Description: Since 1986, the Social Survey Austria (SSÖ), in conjunction with the International Social Survey Program (ISSP), has been investigating social change, i.e. shifts in social structure as well as behaviors and attitudes of the Austrian population over time and in global comparison. ISSP/SSÖ is one of the longest-running general population surveys.
In Austria, ISSP/SSÖ is based on many years of intensive co-operation between social scientists at the Universities of Graz, Linz, Salzburg, and Vienna. The collected data is made available to the social science community in Austria and internationally on an Open Access basis.
The project ensures the collection of data for the survey modules on the topics of "Digital Societies", "National Identity and Citizenship", "Work Orientations", and "Role of Government" in Austria. These survey modules provide important findings on highly salient topics of interest to both researchers and the general public.

Funding: Horizon Europe
Duration: January 2024 - December 2028
Project Lead: Klaus Wegleitner
CSR Participation: Markus Hadler and Beate Klösch for method consulting and data archiving

Project Description: This project has two main objectives: First, to explore and understand the impact of changing workplace organization on the well-being, performance, job quality, and work culture of employees facing serious illness, care giving responsibilities or bereavement. Second, to develop tailored Compassionate Workplaces Programs (CWPs) that promote and support employee health and well-being across different European countries and work contexts. The project involves a cross-national mixed-methods intervention study with embedded process and impact evaluation. It collects data on the relationship between employees' experiences and organizational responses. The results are intended to help create work environments that provide appropriate support and improve employees' mental health and wellbeing.

Funding: Jubilee Fund of the Austrian National Bank
Duration: 2021 to 2025
Project Lead: Karina Fernandez (University College of Teacher Education Styria)
Research Assistant: Elisabeth Zehetner (University College of Teacher Education Styria)
Methodological Advice and Data Archiving: Otto Bodi-Fernandez (CSR, University of Graz)

Project Description: How do pupils experience the transition between primary and secondary school? Primary and secondary schools differ in many aspects and the transition brings a number of challenges for children. However, there are not only differences between different types of schools - differences can also be identified at elementary school level with regard to "school culture". This concerns, for example, concepts of "good" learning and teaching or the question of how cooperation is organized and which rules apply. The experiences of students how they deal with different "school cultures" are the focus of this project. Ultimately, the aim is to derive how transitions can be designed and supported as effectively as possible.

In order to obtain a comprehensive picture of these transition processes in the context of different school cultures, we accompany students over a longer period of time as part of the project and conduct interviews with them at two points in time. At the same time, we also capture the views of teachers and parents on the transition.

Partner Organization: VIVID – Center for Addiction Prevention
Duration: October 2025 – June 2026
Project Leads: Beate Klösch, Karin Scaria-Braunstein and Sabine Haring-Mosbacher

Project Description: The Center for Social Research, together with the Department of Sociology and in cooperation with VIVID – Center for Addiction Prevention, is conducting a quantitative online study on the use of nicotine pouches among students in Styria. The study examines their perception of the risks associated with nicotine pouches, their first experiences with these products, and the motivations and circumstances of use.

A particular focus lies on the interplay between individual factors such as stress and attitudes towards health, and social influences from peers and the broader environment. The online survey is aimed at students at the five largest universities in Styria and enables a nuanced analysis of current consumption patterns and contexts.

The aim of the project is to create a robust empirical fountation for addiction-prevention measures in higher education and to contribute to the academic and public debate on new nicotine products. The findings are intended to support VIVID’s prevention work and to provide evidence-based guidance for information and intervention programs.

LINK

Funding: Vienna Chamber of Labor
Duration: May 2024 - January 2025
Project Lead: Bettina Stadler
Project Staff: Moritz Koch (Bachelor of Sociology student)

Project Description: The question of how and what work should be performed in the future is currently being discussed primarily in connection with the shortage of (skilled) labor. Although the number of unemployed is currently rising again, many areas of the Austrian labor market continue to experience a shortage of (skilled) workers. There is no end to this shortage in sight.
Our research project uses quantitative data to examine which areas of the labor market gained importance over the past two decades, that is, where more people are employed and more working hours are being performed, and which occupations and segments have declined in importance. These findings are contrasted with analyses of data on job vacancies from a company survey.
Central to the project are questions about how labor market shifts relate to job quality, and potential tendencies toward labor market polarization. International evidence pointing to increasing labor market polarization, i.e. the dominance of precarious, low-skilled jobs on the one hand and highly qualified, well-equipped jobs on the other hand, has not yet been confirmed for Austria.

Funding: City of Graz
Duration: 2023-2024
Project Team: Markus Hadler (lead), Rebecca Schaffer (employee)

Project Description: As part of a cooperation between the Center for Social Research, the Urban Planning Department of the City of Graz and the Wegener Center for Climate and Global Change, a comprehensive survey was conducted to capture the carbon footprint of the population of Graz. The Center for Social Research played a key role in developing the questionnaire and organizing a survey of randomly selected residents of Graz. The collected data, together with a detailed report, are archived at the Austrian Social Science Data Archive (AUSSDA). Furthermore, the same questions were also used by the City of Graz in its own survey. The collected data is used to estimate the carbon footprint of the population of Graz.

Funding: Ministry of Science
Duration: 2020-2023, together with the Universities of Vienna, Linz and Salzburg
Head of the Graz Site: Markus Hadler and Anja Eder

Project Description: Various processes of digitalization affect all areas of society.  For the social sciences, these changes require a rethinking of instruments and practices from the paper era. The further development of digital data collection and analysis methods for analyzing, reflecting on, and shaping social and political transformation processes is therefore central to the future orientation of social science higher education and research. New digital data formats require the establishment of new research ethics and data protection standards, balancing systemic and individual benefits on the one hand and risks on the other. The project's central focus is on developing a holistic, legally, and ethically grounded, and reflexive approach of digital research data and analytical methods usable by and for the social sciences, taking into account the different disciplinary cultures.

Funding: Austrian National Bank
Duration: 2019-2021
Lead: Markus Hadler

Project Description: In the Paris Climate Agreement, Austria has committed itself to dramatically reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the coming decades. Currently, such emissions are mainly recorded at national level in research and discussed on the basis of per-capita averages. This approach does not allow for reliable statements about the role of different social groups in relation to climate change and emissions. Existing surveys on environmental behavior, on the other hand, allow statements to be made about the connection between behavior, attitudes, and the willingness to change, but have not been developed for the greenhouse gas-relevant behavior of the population. This project aims to close this gap, capture the CO2-relevant behavior of the Austrian population, test the factors influencing these various behaviors, and thus contribute to achieving the Paris Agreement.

Client: BMBWF
Duration: 04/2020-12/2021
Project Team: Otto Bodi-Fernandez, Manfred Herzog, Lorenz Makula
Link: COVID-19 Dataverse

Project Description: AUSSDA has launched the project COSSDA - COVID-19 Social Science Data Hub Austria with the support of the Federal Ministry of Education, Science, and Research (BMBWF). It provides the research community with a foundation for empirical analyses on COVID-19 topics in Austria and beyond.
COSSDA builds on the predecessor project COVID-19 Data Fast Track Publishing and ensures that the reusable research data of social science COVID studies in Austria are collected in one central location, sustainably archived,  and made available as soon as possible in accordance to the FAIR data principles (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable).

Commissioned by: BMBWF
Duration: 07/2020-03/2021
Link: COVID-19 Dataverse
Project Team: Otto Bodi-Fernandez, Manfred Herzog, Lorenz Makula

Project Description: In the context of the global pandemic, researchers around the world are sharing their survey data with colleagues to develop solutions together. The research also focuses on the social and economic impacts of the pandemic. Since the beginning of the crisis, a large amount of social science data has been collected in Austria that deals with both the spread of the virus and its social consequences. To make this highly topical data available to the scientific community as quickly as possible, AUSSDA has launched the COVID-19 Data Fast Track Publishing project with the support of the Federal Ministry of Education, Science and Research (BMBWF). This enables COVID-19 data to be made available at AUSSDA in a fast-track process.

The project is being coordinated and implemented by the AUSSDA center at the University of Graz, which is based at the Department of Sociology.

Funding: Higher Education Area Structural Funds (HRSM) Project of the Federal Ministry of Science and Research
Duration: 2017-2021
Staff at the Graz Location: Franz Höllinger and Markus Hadler (lead), Christoph Glatz, Anja Eder and Otto Bodi

Project Description: SoWiDat-Austria is a cooperative project among the Departments of Sociology at the Universities of Graz (lead), Linz, Salzburg, and Vienna for the collection and utilization of data from long-term social observation in Austria. The aims of the project are the design and implementation of the Social Survey Austria (SSÖ) in connection with the International Social Survey Program (ISSP), the archiving of the data in the Austrian Social Science Data Archive AUSSDA, the analysis of the data, and the creation of joint publications, as well as accompanying methodological research.

Funding body: FWF
Duration: 10/2013-9/2016
Project Team: Franz Höllinger, Sabine Haring-Mosbacher, Anja Eder (Eva-Maria Griesbacher, Maria Maierhofer, Bernd Promitzer and Katharina Thünauer)

Project Description: Family farms today face two major challenges: As agricultural prices are very low due to technological developments and the globalization of markets, many farmers can only secure their material existence if they develop new production and marketing concepts. At the same time, it is necessary for farmers to find new models of family life that reconcile the requirements of family-based farm management with postmodern notions and of partnership, family, and leisure. This research project therefore investigates how farmers perceive and evaluate their business and family situation and what ideas and strategies they develop to achieve a good quality of life in both economic and private terms.

Funding: Jubilee Fund of the National Bank
Duration: 2010-2011
Project Team: Max Haller (lead), Bernadette Müller

Funded by: Science Department of the Provincial Government of Styria
Duration: 2010-2011
Project Team: Max Haller (lead), Bernadette Müller

Funding: FWF
Duration: 2007-2010
Project Team: Franz Höllinger (lead), Thomas Tripold, Gabriele Diesel, Michael Longhino

Funding: FWF
Duration: 2007-2008
Project Lead: Max Haller

Funding: FWF
Duration: 2004-2006
Project Team: Max Haller (lead), Bernadette Müller, Regina Ressler