Approaches in the tradition of e.g. positivism or critical radicalism stress that it is important that science upholds the ideals of searching for truth, intersubjectivity and empirical evidence and that relativism is also a fallacy because – if taken seriously – what is the difference between “fake news”, “alternative facts” and scientific knowledge? Moreover, many research questions in the social sciences require certainty about (dis)similarities between contexts, e.g. in social inequality research.

So far, suggestions to overcome these contrasting demands on social science methodology have mostly focused on methods, e.g. by mixing methods or applying cross-cultural survey methods. In contrast, this session aims at addressing the underlying deeper epistemological and methodological issues which remain mainly unresolved: how to overcome the divide between positivism and constructivism, address historical and present power relations and truly decolonize social science methodology? We invite papers that deal with these methodological questions stemming both from theoretical and empirical considerations.

Papers should address one of the questions below either at a more general methodological level or using a concrete example in a specific research project:

1. What methodological innovations concerning digital methods can be observed? Where is the highest need for developing methodological approaches for integrating digital methods into empirical social research?
2. Which social phenomena are captured adequately by digital data, which are not? Which qualitative and/or quantitative digital methods are best suited for which kind of theoretical problems?
3. How can fields and populations be defined when using digital methods? What are appropriate sampling procedures? How can biases be corrected and how can results be generalized?
4. What are the advantages and disadvantages of specific digital data and how can their quality be assessed? When are traditional, non-digital methods better suited than digital methods? When are digital data better suited?
5. How can digital data be analyzed? When are assumptions of traditional methods of analysis violated and what are more appropriate ways of analysis?
6. When, why and how should methods be mixed?

However, analyzing such phenomena empirically pose methodological problems which have to be solved simultaneously: Not only is a (1) multi-level analysis needed, but (2) meso and macro phenomena typically change only on the longue durée, thus requiring either longitudinal analysis, historical methods or archival methods which typically make use of QUAL documentary analysis or QUAN public administrative data, structural or trend data. Although there are many sources of secondary data available, these data are produced in their respective historical times and face the problems of selectivity and availability. (3) In contrast, micro phenomena either address the individual lifecourse or biographies which are typically either analyzed with QUAN survey data or QUAL narrative interviews. Alternatively, very short-term social processes are typically grasped by methods such as ethnography and video analysis. Data are collected today and any past events are reconstructed from the perspective of the present – which poses the particular problem of how to reconstruct past events and social practices on the micro level.

In summary, process-oriented micro-macro-analyses typically combine or mix different data sorts (e.g. ethnography and public administrative data) which address different time layers. Based on these observations, the session asks how to conduct process-oriented micro—meso-macro-analyses.

The session builds on the discussion started at the “8^th International Conference on Social Science Methodology” (Sydney, 2012) and in the HSR Special Issue “Spatial Analysis in the Social Sciences and Humanities” (2014) which was continued at the “World Congress of Sociology” (Yokohama 2014), the “6^th Conference of the European Survey Research Association” (Reykjavik 2015) and the “9^th International Conference on Social Science Methodology” (Leicester 2016).

Papers should address one of the questions below either at a more general methodological level or using a concrete example in a specific research project:

1. Which qualitative and/or quantitative methods are best suited for which kind of theoretical problems?

2. What methodological innovations concerning the spatial can be observed? (How) can traditional sociological or geographical methods be adjusted to address spatial problems within sociology?

3. How can the development, usage, integration, and/or analysis of maps or mappings (e.g. sketches, drawings, and pictures) contribute to the research process?

4. Which sampling strategies are appropriate for spatial problems?

5. What are the specific data requirements for spatial analysis, and how can these data be collected?

6. Which strategies of data analysis are appropriate for spatial analysis?