During the last years, analytical sociology established as a research program that aims to explain the social reality by an understanding approach. When explaining macro-level phenomena such as network structures, diffusion of social practices or certain attitudes, analytical sociology intends to overcome incomplete explanations which remain restricted on the macro level. Instead, the crucial objective is to unveil the meso- or micro-level social mechanisms operating as causative factors for the explananda on the macro-level.

While the research program of analytic sociology is comparably well-grounded as regards theory, empirical tests of social mechanisms still need to be advanced. Until now, only a limited amount of quantitative studies within a restricted set of sociological domains explicitly refers to mechanism-based explanations.

The objective of the research project AnaGramm is to close this gap. By using the theoretical and methodological tools of analytical sociology, AnaGramm systematically answers research questions from the fields of theoretical sociology as well as communication and attitude research. A matter of particular importance is to test mechanism-based explanations by means of more elaborated statistical methods.