Vooruitgang in de Nederlandse sociologie

Progress in Dutch Sociology: The Importance of Diversity and Data Availability

How has Dutch sociology developed in its centenary? What are the most important changes? Nowadays, sociologists can download publicly available, cross-national survey data in a few minutes on their computer. This practice, which greatly advances theoretical and empirical insights in sociology, is easily taken for granted. Behind this practice, however, are important data innovations. In this overview article, I sketch how innovations in sociology have led to more and more different data sources on the menu of sociologists, that data has become qualitatively better, and that data has been made much more available to third parties. It is this data revolution that has allowed sociologists to describe and explain social reality better than before, and that the relevance of the discipline to society has gained momentum.