W. (Wouter) Quite MSc.

Wouter Quite is a PhD candidate at the Department of Sociology and member of the PhD council of the Graduate School.

His research interests are family sociology, social policies, (survey) methodology and statistics, the analyses of large scale (cross national & longitudinal) data, social capital, (online) social networks, social mobility, game theory, rational choice, and experimental sociology/economy.

Quite’s current research is in the domain of family sociology, where a cross-national comparative perspective is applied to provide a more comprehensive understanding of the effect of national policies and the economic and cultural context on motives for family members to provide support and actual support behavior. A key premise of this study is to test different explanatory models in different national and regional contexts to provide crucial insights into the applicability of altruism, exchange, and norms as explanations for family solidarity.

In doing so, the relative importance of different macro level indicators in explaining cross-national differences in family support is addressed. This study aims to answer questions such as (a) to what extent are norms formed by national policies, and (b) is a reciprocal exchange relation a more dominant predictor of family support in countries with less extended welfare arrangements.