The Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) has announced that it will fund 16 new Priority Programmes from the beginning of 2007. This was decided by the DFG Senate at its meeting on 6 April 2006. The new programmes, which were selected from 47 proposals, will receive approximately 57 million euros in funding during their initial funding period. Priority Programmes promote networking between research groups working on a specific topic, both within Germany and internationally. The coordinated, distributed funding of novel problems is intended to give strong impetus to the progress of research in the field addressed. Priority Programmes generally run for a period of six years. This brings the number of Priority Programmes funded by the DFG to 94.
The new Priority Programmes:
Humanities and Social Sciences
The Priority Programme "Survey Methodology" will study one of the main instruments used in social science research: scientific surveys. The programme's main objective is to improve data quality. Its research will focus on the development of survey methodologies and new technological methods of data analysis and processing. In addition to this, the researchers hope to find ways to increase the willingness to participate in such surveys.
(Coordinator: Prof. Uwe Engel, University of Bremen)
Systematic testing of skills is central to the development of education systems and in international comparative studies such as PISA. The Priority Programme "Skill Models for Measuring Individual Learning Outcomes and Assessing Educational Processes" will, for the first time, bring together the approaches of leading educational researchers to develop theoretically and empirically sound competence models and appropriate measurement procedures.
(Coordinator: Prof. Eckhard Kliem
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Contact: Dr. Eva-Maria Streier
em.streier@dfg.de
49-022-888-52250
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft
25-Apr-2006