Our repertory

We borrow our multidisciplinary methods and tools from sociology, anthropology and psychology and further develop and adapt these:

Our toolbox includes

• qualitative interviews
  
• open explorations, e.g. analysis of household structures
  
• participant observation in the everyday lives of individuals
  
• ethnographic and cultural anthropological methods
  
• biographical analyses and life course research methods
  
• psychologically grounded methods
  
• creative procedures in group processes and workshops

Whenever we are dealing with complex issues and unconventional questions, our methods are consistently competent: participant observation enables the recording of behaviour patterns which are otherwise only difficult to define. Otherwise indescribable human needs can be identified through the use of ethnographic methods. Through psychological methods, individual actions and desires can be accessed, revealing seemingly concealed obstacles and barriers from which conclusions can be drawn from.

We compare results from our qualitative analyses with our basic research results and database. These include studies of long-term changes in household and family structures, life histories of different age cohorts, studies of the history of household mechanisation in the 19th and 20th centuries, studies of individual attitude and value patterns as well as the long-term changes in behavioural patterns (>Publications).