Publications

This is our first international publication on the prevalence of doping in competitive sports. We used a variant of the randomised response technique (RRT) to measure the prevalence of doping among elite athletes in Germany. This publication has contributed to indirect survey methods becoming part of the standard repertoire in international doping research.

Pitsch, W. & Emrich, E. (2012). The frequency of doping in elite sport : results of a replication study. International Review for the Sociology of Sport, 47(5), 559–580. https://doi.org/10.1177/1012690211413969

Mechanisms of social crisis construction represent interesting sociological phenomena. Using the example of communication about motor and health deficits in children and adolescents, we have examined such constructions and also applied them to other areas. In particular, we focus on the significance of different stakeholders and the role of science itself as a crisis constructor.

Although the publication 

Klein, M., Papathanassiou, V., Pitsch, W., & Emrich, E. (2005). Aspekte sozialer Konstruktion von Krisen - Kommunikation über Gesundheit und Leistungsfähigkeit von Kindern und Jugendlichen in der Sportwissenschaft. Sportwissenschaft, 35(1), 15–38. Abruf unter https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:0168-ssoar-281126

is somewhat older, it marks the beginning of a larger research programme that has been pursued ever since.

As a result of his dissertation project,

Flatau, J. (2007). Die Entwicklung der Leichtathletikvereine. Eine kritische empirische Analyse zur "Krise der Leichtathletik". Sportverlag Strauß. 

Jens Flatau has not only continued and deepened the tradition of empirical sports club research already established in our working group, but has also broken new ground in sports science methodology. The starting point for his work was the contradictions between the theoretically and empirically derived expectations of sports science and the expectations of practice. Using significance tests in the sense of the statistical hybrid model, he demonstrated how resolving these contradictions can constructively advance theory development in sports club research.

Jens Flatau now heads the Sports Economics and Sociology department at Christian Albrecht University in Kiel.

After completing his masters degree in sports science, Christian Rullang worked as a research assistant at the chair. In his dissertation, 

Rullang, C. (2017). Eine sozioökonomische Analyse des Schiedsrichters im deutschen Fußball. Universität des Saarlandes. https://doi.org/10.22028/D291-23445

he analyses the role of football referees as social figures in organised sport, thereby providing key insights for practical application – including for the DFB. The work examines the motives, experiences and challenges of referees from a socio-economic perspective and makes an important contribution to the further development of refereeing in German football. It addresses three main topics: the self-perception of a good referee, problems that arise (violence and attempts to influence) and the use of an information and communication application in official work.

The book on cheater detection in randomised response technology offers an in-depth analysis and further development of randomised response technology (RRT), an established method for collecting sensitive data that is designed to reduce social desirability bias in particular. Despite guaranteed anonymity, this technique is also subject to so-called ‘cheating’, i.e. deliberately disregarding survey instructions. The volume is devoted to the mathematical derivation and statistical analysis of methods for detecting and quantifying this cheating. In addition, practical applications and optimisation options are presented that improve the flexible and reliable use of the technique in empirical research. For the first time, a general solution for various forms of cheating is developed.

The book is the result of a collaboration between the working group in Saarbrücken and colleagues at the Fraunhofer Institute for Industrial Mathematics (ITWM) in Kaiserslautern. The fundamental research on RRT methods presented in the book represents a significant contribution to the use of these techniques in sensitive areas such as doping, corruption and other deviant behaviour – topics that are particularly relevant to the work of the Saarbrücken group. The publication is aimed in particular at social scientists and statisticians who deal with the methodologically sound collection of sensitive data.

During the translation of the book, several errors in the German version were corrected: 

Feth, S., Frenger, Monika, Pitsch, Werner, & Schmelzeisen, P. (2017). Cheater-Detection for Randomized Response-Techniques. Derivation, Analyses and Application. Schriften des Europäischen Instituts für Sozioökonomie e.V.: Vol. 12. universaar. 

The randomised response techniques described herein are an important result of our research programme on indirect survey methods and have been used in a large number of our studies on doping in sport, but also on other forms of deviant behaviour such as corruption and match fixing.