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Department of Formal Models and Quantitative Methods in Sociology

The focus of the scientific reflection and research in the Department is the development of formal models of social phenomena and processes and the application of various quantitative methods in social research.

The work on the development and use of formal models of social phenomena and processes reflects both the study of classical statistical models, models of demographic processes, and other models developed within different theoretical traditions. The research conducted so far and continued by the members of the Department is in the interpenetrating areas of decision theory, justice theory, game theory, social choice theory, and formal policy theory. It is interdisciplinary, combining issues of mathematics, economics, political science, ethics, and, within sociology itself, is linked mainly to rational choice theory and mathematical sociology.

Another area of interest for the Department’s team is the issue of applications of statistics in social research, as well as issues related to quantitative research methodology. Work on the development of quantitative methods in the research practice of sociology requires the involvement of members of the Department’s team in empirical research that adapts methodological solutions to specific research problems leading to the development of new tools and methods, although the issues of the research itself can be very different. Although the common denominator for all members of the Department’s team is a special interest in methodological issues in their research, the strong emphasis on empirics naturally leads to the development within the Department – as if by chance – of many specific areas of sociology (such as the sociology of the labour market, the sociology of politics, education, etc.) – this is a result, but also an expression of the servile (but not subordinate) role of methodology in relation to all sub-disciplines of the social sciences.

The Department’s spectrum of interest includes all quantitative methods, including population research methods based on registry data, other analyses of found data, and sample surveys, including surveys.

RESEARCH AREAS

  • Statistics and its applications in social research
  • Social choice theory and equity theory
  • Game theory
  • Formal political theory
  • Methodology for register-based population studies
  • Survey methodology
  • Social demography
  • Sociology of education

Projects

Projects in progress
  • OECD PISA 2025. Jacek Haman – member of the Polish research team, Krzysztof Bulkowski – head of the study in Poland (National Project Manager).
  • OECD PIAAC 2021/2022. Jacek Haman – member of the Polish research team.
  • PIRLS 2021. Krzysztof Bulkowski – member of the Polish research team (National Data Manager).
  • Partnership project “Integrated Analytical Platform”, 2019-2022, (Ministry of Digitalisation, Ministry of Science and Higher Education, Ministry of Family, Labour and Social Policy, Ministry of Health, ITI EMAG and Warsaw School of Economics, University of Warsaw) implemented from June 2019 under Measure 2.2 “Digitisation of back-office processes in government administration” under Priority Axis II of the Operational Programme Digital Poland 2014 -2020; Henryk Banaszak, Marek Bożykowski, Krzysztof Bulkowski, Mikołaj Jasiński (project manager at UW), Marta Kiełkowska, Joanna Konieczna-Sałamatin, Marek Styczeń [15]
  • “A new model of cooperation between social employment institutions”, a project implemented by the Institute of Labour and Social Affairs – Marta Kiełkowska, member of the research team.
  • Reconstructing and making available data from the 1972 social mobility survey and the monograph Social mobility in Poland by Michal Pohoski”. Mainly through the efforts of Marek Styczeń, it has been possible to reconstruct unique data and to reproduce and digitise Prof. Michal Pohoski’s (hitherto unpublished) fundamental book for research on social structure in Poland (work in progress).
Completed projects
  • A series of studies on the electoral system carried out by the Stefan Batory Foundation:
    • Survey of ballots from the 2014 local government elections. Jacek Haman – co-authored methodology, sampling, selection of statistical methods, data analysis. [5]
    • Polish party finances. Jacek Haman – Design and analysis of the results of a methodological experiment. [4]
    • Local election observation 2018. Jacek Haman – Developing a methodology for rigorous, representative observation with hundreds of community activists. [6]
    • Survey of election officials. Jacek Haman – development of survey concept, methodology, research tools, development of results. [7
  •  OECD PISA 2000-2022. Jacek Haman – member of the Polish research team (sampling, data analysis, statistical and methodological consultation). [8][9]
  •  OECD PISA 2018-2022. Krzysztof Bulkowski – member of the Polish research team, head of the study in Poland (National Project Manager).
  •  “Teachers’ working time and conditions” (a project of the Institute of Educational Research). Jacek Haman – development of a working time survey methodology based on the day after recall technique. [63]
  •  Social decision-making:
    •  Jacek Haman – research on progressive and degressive proportionality in the distribution of parliamentary seats. [3, 64]
    • Mikołaj Jasiński – Decision-making in large ideologically diverse assemblies. Oceanic games in ideological structures [25, 31, 32, 33, 34, 43].
    • Marek Bożykowski – Fair distribution of a set of indivisible goods [24, 35, 37]
  •  Evaluation research at the University of Warsaw conducted by the research team of the Laboratory of Education Quality Evaluation at the University of Warsaw; Marek Bożykowski, Mikołaj Jasiński (head), Joanna Konieczna-Sałamatin [38].
    •  Joanna Konieczna-Sałamatin uses the experience she gained from developing evaluation research at the University of Warsaw and provides training in public policy evaluation for local governments and NGOs in Ukraine. The result of this work is a textbook edited by her and published in Ukrainian in 2016. [49]
  •  Monitoring the economic fate of university graduates – the “ELA” project; Marek Bożykowski, Mikołaj Jasiński [17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23].
  • Three projects (2011-2015) commissioned by the Educational Research Institute under the Human Capital Operational Programme, Priority III-High Quality of the Education System: Measure: 3.1- Modernization of the System of Supervision and Management in Education Sub-measure: 3.1.1- Creating Conditions for Monitoring Evaluation and Research of the Education System; Marek Bożykowski, Mikołaj Jasiński (project manager), Joanna Konieczna-Sałamatin, Marek Styczeń [27, 28, 29, 35, 38, 39, 40, 41, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48].
    • Monitoring the fate of university graduates using Social Insurance Institution administrative data.
    •  Monitoring the fate of university graduates using Social Insurance Institution administrative data. Part 2: Implementation of a system for monitoring the fate of graduates and popularisation of techniques for analysing information from registers developed as part of IBE research projects.
    •  Monitoring the fate of university graduates using Social Insurance Institution administrative data. Part 3: Creation of tools for processing and analysing information from the administrative records of several universities and the Social Insurance Institution for the purpose of researching the educational and professional fate of university graduates, opening up new fields of analysis
  •   Within the framework of cooperation with the non-governmental sector, Joanna Konieczna-Sałamatin was the author of the methodology and manager of the project “Highly skilled immigrants on the Polish labour market” implemented by the “Our Choice” Foundation and the Institute for Social and Economic Expertise [55].
  • Values research, in particular European Values Study – Joanna Konieczna-Sałamatin has been a member of the team since its inception at the Institute of Sociology. The EVS is an international research project, managed by a board of programme directors (on the part of the WS UW, Prof. Mirosława Marody being a member of the board). Several publications have been produced on the basis of EVS data, including J. Konieczna-Sałamatin’s article on evasion in survey research [50], which addresses methodological issues, and a book edited by M. Marody [51], which J. Konieczna-Sałamatin co-authored, in particular responsible for the statistical models included therein.
  • Mention should also be made of the interdisciplinary project ‘Cultures of History in Transition: Reconciling Memory, History and Identity in Contemporary Central and Eastern Europe’, funded by an NCN grant and implemented by a scientific consortium of the Institute of Political Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences and Collegium Civitas. In this project, Joanna Konieczna-Sałamatin was the author of the methodology of that part of the project which uses sociological research. The project uses both quantitative (survey) and qualitative (group and individual interviews, discourse analysis, content analysis) methods of social research. You can read more about the project on its website culture-historical.eu. Some results from the research are already published [53].
  • The interdisciplinary project “Uncompleted migration transition and population ageing in Poland. Asynchronicity of population transition and change in formal and informal care institutions” carried out at the Centre for Migration Research, UW Marta Kiełkowska was a contractor [11, 12, 13, 14, 65, 66, 67]. Among other things, she was involved in the development of research tools, coordination of field research in Końskie and Kluczbork and elaboration of results [12, 14, 65]. The research was carried out via the ethnosurvey method. The quantitative part of the study (on household samples) was carried out by IS students as part of a research seminar (led by Marta Kiełkowska and Ewa Jaźwińska). The students also took part in conducting part of the in-depth interviews and auditorium surveys with students from Konec and Kluczbork schools.