Current Research
"Social Embeddedness in Social Networks and the Reproduction of Socioeconomic Inequality in Educational Attainments (SERIOUS)"
Principal investigator: Dr. Georg Lorenz
Project researcher: Till Hovestadt
Project duration: 18.04.2022-31.03.2025
Funding agency: German Research Foundation (DFG)
Within the project SERIOUS, light shall be shed on the social embeddedness of students and whether this increases socioeconomic inequality in educational contexts. Not much is known on the social interactions of students and the attributes of their friends in relation with educational inequality. The project examines differences in the endowment with social capital (resources attainable through social interactions) between social classes, how these are generated on the micro level and how they produce/increase educational inequalities on the macro level. Analytically, we focus on sociometric measures of students' friendship networks in secondary school. These data will be analyzed using advanced computational methods for social network analysis, such as Stochastic Actor Oriented Models (SAOMs). We hypothesize that students from varying social classes form different social networks in the school context and that way, higher class students gain access to more resources. This in turn should exacerbate educational inequalities.
Further information.