TY - JOUR A1 - Khalil, Samir A1 - Kohler, Ulrich A1 - Tjaden, Jasper T1 - Is there a rural penalty in language acquisition? BT - evidence from Germany's refugee allocation policy JF - Frontiers in sociology N2 - Emerging evidence has highlighted the important role of local contexts for integration trajectories of asylum seekers and refugees. Germany's policy of randomly allocating asylum seekers across Germany may advantage some and disadvantage others in terms of opportunities for equal participation in society. This study explores the question whether asylum seekers that have been allocated to rural areas experience disadvantages in terms of language acquisition compared to those allocated to urban areas. We derive testable assumptions using a Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG) which are then tested using large-N survey data (IAB-BAMF-SOEP refugee survey). We find that living in a rural area has no negative total effect on language skills. Further the findings suggest that the "null effect" is the result of two processes which offset each other: while asylum seekers in rural areas have slightly lower access for formal, federally organized language courses, they have more regular exposure to German speakers. KW - refugees KW - allocation policies KW - rural KW - language acquisition KW - intergroup KW - contacts KW - language courses KW - integration Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.3389/fsoc.2022.841775 SN - 2297-7775 VL - 7 PB - Frontiers Media CY - Lausanne ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Kohler, Ulrich A1 - Post, Julia C. T1 - Welcher Zweck heiligt die Mittel? T1 - Which Ends Justify the Means? BT - Bemerkungen zur Repräsentativitätsdebatte in der Umfrageforschung BT - Comments on the Usability of Non-Probability Samples for Opinion Polls JF - Zeitschrift für Soziologie N2 - Im Vergleich zu Umfragen an Wahrscheinlichkeitsstichproben bieten Umfragen an Access-Panels, die auf Nicht-Wahrscheinlichkeitsstichproben basieren, unbestreitbare wirtschaftliche Vorteile. Diese Vorteile gehen jedoch mit unvermeidbaren Qualitätseinbußen einher, die auch dann bestehen bleiben, wenn Erstere sehr niedrige Responseraten haben. Daher müssen die wirtschaftlichen Vorteile und die methodischen Einschränkungen gegeneinander abgewogen werden. Es wird argumentiert, dass diese Abwägung anhand normativer Festlegungen erfolgen muss. Unter Anwendung der hier vorgeschlagenen Maßstäbe kommt der Beitrag zu dem Schluss, dass die Qualitätsansprüche an über Massenmedien verbreitete Meinungsumfragen höher sein sollten als für rein (sozial)wissenschaftliche Zwecke. N2 - Compared with surveying respondents of a probability sample, surveying members of a self-selective custom online panel offers indisputable economic advantages. However, these advantages come with an unavoidable drop in quality. This disadvantage holds true even in comparison to probability sampling surveys with very low response rates. Therefore, it is necessary to balance the economic advantages against the methodological limitations. We argue that this consideration needs to be done according to normative determinations. Using the criteria proposed in this article, we conclude that public opinion research distributed through mass media should have higher quality standards than research with solely scientific purposes. KW - Umfragen KW - Meinungsumfragen KW - Repräsentativität KW - Wahrscheinlichkeitsstichproben KW - Nicht-Wahrscheinlichkeitsstichproben KW - Unit-Nonresponse KW - Selbstselektion KW - Responseraten KW - Online-Access-Panel KW - Surveys KW - Public Opinion Research KW - Polls KW - Representativeness KW - Survey Inference KW - Probability Sampling KW - Non-probability Sampling KW - Unit Nonresponse KW - Self-selection KW - Response Rates KW - Custom Online Panel Y1 - 2023 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1515/zfsoz-2023-2001 SN - 2366-0325 SN - 0340-1804 VL - 52 IS - 1 SP - 67 EP - 88 PB - de Gruyter CY - Oldenburg ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Kohler, Ulrich A1 - Post, Julia C. T1 - Pulp Science? BT - zur Berichterstattung über Meinungsforschung in den Massenmedien JF - Gesellschaft, Wirtschaft, Politik : GWP : Sozialwissenschaften für politische Bildung Y1 - 2023 U6 - https://doi.org/10.3224/gwp.v72i4.09 SN - 2196-1654 SN - 1619-6910 VL - 72 IS - 4 SP - 475 EP - 483 PB - Budrich CY - Leverkusen ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Khalil, Samir A1 - Kohler, Ulrich A1 - Tjaden, Jasper Dag T1 - Is There a Rural Penalty in Language Acquisition? Evidence From Germany's Refugee Allocation Policy JF - Frontiers in Sociology N2 - Emerging evidence has highlighted the important role of local contexts for integration trajectories of asylum seekers and refugees. Germany's policy of randomly allocating asylum seekers across Germany may advantage some and disadvantage others in terms of opportunities for equal participation in society. This study explores the question whether asylum seekers that have been allocated to rural areas experience disadvantages in terms of language acquisition compared to those allocated to urban areas. We derive testable assumptions using a Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG) which are then tested using large-N survey data (IAB-BAMF-SOEP refugee survey). We find that living in a rural area has no negative total effect on language skills. Further the findings suggest that the “null effect” is the result of two processes which offset each other: while asylum seekers in rural areas have slightly lower access for formal, federally organized language courses, they have more regular exposure to German speakers. KW - refugees KW - allocation policies KW - rural KW - language acquisition KW - intergroup contacts KW - language courses KW - integration Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.3389/fsoc.2022.841775 SN - 2297-7775 VL - 7 SP - 1 EP - 11 PB - Frontiers CY - Lausanne, Schweiz ER - TY - GEN A1 - Khalil, Samir A1 - Kohler, Ulrich A1 - Tjaden, Jasper Dag T1 - Is There a Rural Penalty in Language Acquisition? Evidence From Germany's Refugee Allocation Policy T2 - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Wirtschafts- und Sozialwissenschaftliche Reihe N2 - Emerging evidence has highlighted the important role of local contexts for integration trajectories of asylum seekers and refugees. Germany's policy of randomly allocating asylum seekers across Germany may advantage some and disadvantage others in terms of opportunities for equal participation in society. This study explores the question whether asylum seekers that have been allocated to rural areas experience disadvantages in terms of language acquisition compared to those allocated to urban areas. We derive testable assumptions using a Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG) which are then tested using large-N survey data (IAB-BAMF-SOEP refugee survey). We find that living in a rural area has no negative total effect on language skills. Further the findings suggest that the “null effect” is the result of two processes which offset each other: while asylum seekers in rural areas have slightly lower access for formal, federally organized language courses, they have more regular exposure to German speakers. T3 - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Wirtschafts- und Sozialwissenschaftliche Reihe - 151 KW - refugees KW - allocation policies KW - rural KW - language acquisition KW - intergroup contacts KW - language courses KW - integration Y1 - 2022 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-566264 SN - 1867-5808 SP - 1 EP - 11 PB - Universitätsverlag Potsdam CY - Potsdam ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Post, Julia C. A1 - Class, Fabian A1 - Kohler, Ulrich T1 - Unit nonresponse biases in estimates of SARS-CoV-2 prevalence JF - Survey research methods N2 - Since COVID-19 became a pandemic, many studies are being conducted to get a better understanding of the disease itself and its spread. One crucial indicator is the prevalence of SARS-CoV-2 infections. Since this measure is an important foundation for political decisions, its estimate must be reliable and unbiased. This paper presents reasons for biases in prevalence estimates due to unit nonresponse in typical studies. Since it is difficult to avoid bias in situations with mostly unknown nonresponse mechanisms, we propose the maximum amount of bias as one measure to assess the uncertainty due to nonresponse. An interactive web application is presented that calculates the limits of such a conservative unit nonresponse confidence interval (CUNCI). KW - COVID-19 KW - prevalence KW - probability samples KW - unit nonresponse KW - conservative confidence limits KW - nonresponse bias Y1 - 2020 U6 - https://doi.org/10.18148/srm/2020.v14i2.7755 SN - 1864-3361 VL - 14 IS - 2 SP - 115 EP - 121 PB - European Survey Research Association CY - Duisburg ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Kohler, Ulrich A1 - Brady, David A1 - Guerra, Christian A1 - Link, Bruce T1 - The long term relationship between Medicaid expansion and adult life-threatening chronic conditions JF - Social policy and administration N2 - We test whether the expansions of children's Medicaid eligibility in the 1980s–1990s resulted in long-term health benefits in terms of severe chronic conditions. Still relatively rare in the field, we use prospective individual-level panel data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) along with the higher quality income measures from the Cross-National Equivalent File (adjusting for taxes, transfers and household size). We observe severe chronic conditions (high blood pressure/heart disease, cancer, diabetes, or lung disease) at ages 30–56 (average age 43.1) for 4670 respondents who were also prospectively observed during childhood (i.e., at ages 0–17). Our analysis exploits within-region temporal variation in childhood Medicaid eligibility and adjusts for state- and individual-level controls. We uniquely concentrate attention on adjusting for childhood income. A standard deviation greater childhood Medicaid eligibility significantly reduces the probability of severe chronic conditions in adulthood by 0.05 to 0.12 (16%–37.5% reduction from mean 0.32). Across the range of observed childhood Medicaid eligibility, the probability is approximately cut in half. Greater childhood Medicaid eligibility also substantially reduces childhood income disparities in severe chronic conditions. At higher levels of childhood Medicaid eligibility, we find no significant childhood income disparities in adult severe chronic conditions. Y1 - 2023 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1111/spol.12942 SN - 0144-5596 SN - 1467-9515 VL - 58 IS - 1 SP - 39 EP - 60 PB - Wiley-Blackwell CY - Oxford ER -