After positioning sociology as a field that seeks to understand how upstream social conditions shape how individuals think, feel, and act, Jeroen will focus on one of its central concepts: class.

What do sociologists mean when they use the terms class or classed, and how do these concepts inform their research?

Jeroen will then reflect on sociological perspectives on the phenomena studied in the GUTS consortium, with particular attention to the role of class, poverty, and inequality.

How are class, poverty, and inequality understood to shape people’s, e.g., reluctance to participate in research, child-rearing practices, relationships with formal institutions such as education and science, and (mental) health?

In this session Thijs will give an introduction to the register data of the CBS. What is it?, how can you use it?, and what kind of questions that are interesting for GUTS could be answered using the registers? Using several practical examples, we will go over the potential benefits and time investments for using the data.

People’s social networks shape their behaviour. One way to study these relationships is by examining personal (egocentric) networks. In this workshop, we will explore the types of questions that can be addressed using personal network data and how to analyse them.

In the final session of the day we will elaborate on the meaning of socio-economic status (SES) in GUTS. We will discuss the different objective and subjective SES measures we employed in GUTS and how to choose the best fitting measure for your research. Additionally, we will provide a unique first insight into the SES distribution of the Amsterdam and Rotterdam cohorts of the first wave of data collection!