Hi, welcome to my personal website. I am head of the GESIS Panel and deputy head of the department Survey Design and Methodology at GESIS Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences (my website at GESIS). My research interests focus on methods of empirical research in the social sciences (esp. meta-analysis and survey methodology), family sociology, juvenile delinquency and educational sociology. Over the last years, I also developed an interest in medical sociology.

News

  • 2017-10-22: After an extensive hiatus, I finally manged to update my CV.

  • 2017-01-02: Started my new position at GESIS Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences as head of the GESIS Panel. The GESIS Panel is a probability-based mixed-mode access panel for the social sciences. As of now, you can find my contact details here: bernd(dot)weiss(at)gesis(dot)org.

  • 2015-04-10: Another divorce paper... Exploring Increasing Divorce Rates in West Germany: Can We Explain the Iron Law of Increasing Marriage Instability? doi: 10.1093/esr/jcv014

  • 2015-03-28: Our publication bias paper got published: Publication bias in the German social sciences: An application of the caliper test to three top-tier German social science journals. doi: 10.1007/s11135-015-0182-4

  • 2014-11-09: Our Psychometrika book review (w/ Ariel M Aloe) of "Applied Meta-Analysis with R" is available. Our conclusion is as follows:
    In summary, this book provides insight into some of the R packages available for conducting a meta-analysis. This book seems appropriate for someone who has a basic understanding of meta-analytic methods or who is planning to use the book in conjunction with other books that center on the methodological aspects of meta-analysis. Therefore, this book does not present a complete treatment for those who intend to learn meta-analysis for first time. Finally, publishing a book that heavily relies on particular software is always a challenging task since the life-cycle of software can be very short. According to the book’s preface, the authors finished working on the book in December 2012. From today’s perspective the metafor package (the most recent version of which is version 1.9-4, published on July 7, 2014) by Viechtbauer (2010) exceeds the packages meta (Schwarzer, 2014) and rmeta (Lumley, 2012) as a general purpose package for conducting a typical meta-analysis. Indeed, metafor also provides advanced functions for estimating multivariate and multilevel meta-analyses.

  • 2014-11-07: Together with Michael Wagner I wrote a chapter about "Meta-Analyse" for the the "Handbuch Methoden der empirischen Sozialforschung" (edited by Nina Baur and Jörg Blasius).

  • 2014-03-18: In September 2014, will will be giving a workshop on Data Analysis with R at Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen .

  • 2014-01-21: Together with Ariel M. Aloe (University of Northern Iowa), I will be giving a one-week workshop on on "Introductory, Intermediate and Advanced Meta-Analysis Techniques". The workshop is part of the prestigious GESIS Spring Seminar series and this year's focus is on "Multivariate Analysis with Specialized Data in the Social Sciences".
    In contrast to most workshops on meta-analysis, we also plan on covering more advanced stuff like the synthesis of regression models, IPD meta-analysis or multilevel/network meta-analysis.

  • 2013-07-21: In September and October, I will be giving presentations in Greenwich (UK) (Publication bias), Oxford (UK) and Munich (GER) (Unemployment and relationship stability). Also, I was invited to give an introduction to R (scroll down the page).

  • 2013-05-15: I was just informed that our proposal titled "An Application of the Caliper Test to Identify Publication Bias in three High-Ranking German Social Science Journals" has been accepted for presentation at the MAER-Net’s 2013 Colloquium.

  • 2013-03-15: I am attending the Campbell Collaboration Colloquium 2013 in Chicago. The title of our poster is "An Application of the Caliper Test to Identify Publication Bias in three High-Ranking German Social Science Journals".

  • 2013-03-08: I organized a small workshop on "Synthesizing Complex Statistical Models". We had great discussions on how to meta-analyze regression slopes, predictive models or what kind of r alternatives exists.

  • 2012-12-16: GESIS Workshop "Grundlagen sozialwissenschaftlicher Meta-Analysen" (13./14. Dezember 2012) (see Teaching for more information)

  • 2012-10-05: The third meeting of the Köln R User Group took place at the Research Institute for Sociology. The next meeting is planned for February 6, 2013.

  • 2012-09-24: Added publications, most are available as PDF files.

  • 2012-07-29: An update of my CV is available.

  • 2012-06-07: I have set up a new webpage called "Applications of meta-analysis in sociology".

  • 2012-06-01: Release v0.1 of tuma: A graphical user interface for teaching univariate meta-analysis is available.

  • 2012-02-18: Finally managed to upload a pre-alpha release of my new website...
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