Supervision of bachelor and master theses

You are welcome to write your thesis with me. I am happy to supervise interested and motivated students in their projects.


The following groups of people can write theses with me:

For students in the Bachelor of Sociology, I am authorized to examine and may supervise and review final theses without further ado.
For Bachelor theses in other subjects of the Faculty of Social Sciences I am not authorized to examine without further ado. However, it is usually no problem to get permission from the respective institute for the individual case. Just contact me and I will discuss the further procedure with you.
For master theses in the subjects of the Faculty of Social Sciences, I am generally not authorized to conduct examinations. In individual cases, however, permission can be granted by your institute. Alternatively, for master's theses, cooperative supervision at the Center for Methods is possible, in which I take over the supervision together with a person authorized to conduct examinations. Feel free to contact me about the different possibilities.
In the Master of Education (with the subjects Mathematics or Business Education) I am not authorized to supervise examinations. However, since my own research deals with topics that might interest students in these subjects, I supervise Master's theses in these areas. If you are interested in topics from the list below, please feel free to contact me to write a master thesis on these topics under my supervision. We will then work together to find partners in mathematics didactics or economics for the further supervision and review of your thesis.



Topics of your thesis:

In principle, you can come to me with all your ideas for your thesis. We will then discuss together to what extent I can supervise your desired topic or, if necessary, recommend colleagues.
I am especially happy to supervise work that is done in cooperation with a social partner. For more information, please contact the Initiative Sozius of the Office of Student Affairs.
In addition to topics you choose, you can also work with me on your thesis on topic ideas that stem from my own research. You will then be integrated into ongoing projects at the appropriate point and work on sub-projects independently in consultation. Currently, the following topic ideas are available:

Negative attitudes towards statistics education - (background) reasons of student statistics anxiety:.
Many students start the module "Statistics for the Social Sciences I" with negative attitudes towards the module and towards statistics in general. Reasons for this are strongly, but not exclusively, in the previous experiences with (school) mathematics to look for. Based on qualitative interviews, the final paper attempts to illuminate the nature and impact of these prior experiences, but also to uncover other sources of attitudes toward statistics.

Development of attitudes toward statistics in the course of undergraduate statistics education.
In the course of the Statistics for the Social Sciences I module, students have their first experience with (scientific) statistics and become fundamentally educated in various areas. Many start this education with negative attitudes, but go through several ups and downs with the content over the course of the semester and change their attitudes about it. By interviewing students several times over the course of the summer semester, this final paper qualitatively examines the development of students' attitudes.

Emotions in statistics learning - an analysis of semester trajectories.
Over the course of the summer semester, students are asked weekly to answer a question about their current emotions regarding the Statistics for the Social Sciences I module. Once a month they are asked to report on their attitudes. The final paper quantitatively examines emotions over time and considers their effects on attitudes.

Political Beliefs.
Different ideas about what politics or democracy is are not only discussed in political theory. Voters also have personal beliefs about what politics and democracy are about and what their characteristics are. Theses on this can either present literature-guided what influence such beliefs have on the person's political behavior or survey this themselves through qualitative interviews.

Basic ideas about the terms "representative" and "significant".
The terms "representative" and "significant" are two core concepts in statistics. One of their distinguishing features is that they are comprehensive theoretical concepts in statistics, but they have also found their way (in possibly slightly different meanings) into everyday language. This phenomenon gives rise to several questions that can be addressed individually or in bundles in theses: What do the terms "representative" and "significant" mean from a statistical perspective? What is the prevailing understanding of the terms in society? What is the understanding of the terms by scientists (outside of statistics)? How does the understanding of these terms develop over the course of a science education or methods module?