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soep.v26_eng

soep.v26

Titel: German Sozio-oekonomisches Panel Study (SOEP), data of the years 1984 – 2009

DOI: 10.5684/soep.v26
Collection Period: 1984–2009
Publication Date: 17.09.2010
Principal Investigators: Gert. G. Wagner, Joachim R. Frick, Jürgen Schupp, Silke Anger, Jan Goebel, Markus M. Grabka, Elke Holst, Peter Krause, Martin Kroh, Elisabeth Liebau, Henning Lohmann, Christian Schmitt, C. Katharina Spieß
Data Collector: TNS Infratest Sozialforschung GmbH

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Short description

The German Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP) is a wide-ranging representative longitudinal study of private households, located at the German Institute for Economic Research, DIW Berlin. Every year, there were nearly 11,000 households, and more than 20,000 persons sampled by the fieldwork organization TNS Infratest Sozialforschung. The data provide information on all household members, consisting of Germans living in the Old and New German States, Foreigners, and recent Immigrants to Germany. The Panel was started in 1984. Some of the many topics include household composition, occupational biographies, employment, earnings, health and satisfaction indicators.
As early as June 1990—even before the Economic, Social and Monetary Union—SOEP expanded to include the states of the former German Democratic Republic (GDR), thus seizing the rare opportunity to observe the transformation of an entire society. An immigrant sample was added as well to account for the changes that took place in Germany society in 1994/95. Further new samples were added in 1998, 2000, 2002, and 2006. The survey is constantly being adapted and developed in response to current social developments.

Population: Persons living in private households in Germany

Selection method: All samples of SOEP are multi-stage random samples which are regionally clustered. The respondents (households) are selected by random-walk.

Collection mode: The interview methodology of the SOEP is based on a set of pre-tested qustionnaires for households and individuals. Principally an interviewer tries to obtain face-to-face interviews with all members of a given survey household aged 16 years and over. Additionally one person (head of household3) is asked to answer a household related questionnaire covering information on housing, housing costs, and different sources of income. This covers also some questions on children in the household up to 16 years of age, mainly concerning attendance at institutions (kindergarten, elementary school, etc.)

Data set information:

 Number of units 66,189
 Number of variables 43,155 in 322 data sets
 Data formats STATA, SPSS, SAS, CSV
 MD5 fingerprints of every file Stata German (TXT, 14.06 KB)
Stata English (TXT, 14.06 KB)
Stata English+German (TXT, 14.06 KB)
SPSS German (TXT, 14.06 KB)
SPSS English (TXT, 14.06 KB)
SPSS portable German (TXT, 14.06 KB)
SPSS portable English (TXT, 14.06 KB)
SAS German (TXT, 15.63 KB)
SAS English (TXT, 15.63 KB)
SAS portable German (TXT, 14.06 KB)
SAS portable English (TXT, 14.06 KB)

Publications:

  • Jan Goebel, Markus M. Grabka, Stefan Liebig, Martin Kroh, David Richter, Carsten Schröder, Jürgen Schupp. 2018. The German Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP). Jahrbücher für Nationalökonomie und Statistik / Journal of Economics and Statistics (online first), doi: 10.1515/jbnst-2018-0022
  • Gert G. Wagner, Jan Göbel, Peter Krause, Rainer Pischner, and Ingo Sieber (2008). Das Sozio-oekonomische Panel (SOEP): Multidisziplinäres Haushaltspanel und Kohortenstudie für Deutschland – Eine Einführung (für neue Datennutzer) mit einem Ausblick (für erfahrene Anwender). AStA Wirtschafts- und Sozialstatistisches Archiv 2 (4), 301-328. (download)
  • Schupp, Jürgen (2009): 25 Jahre Sozio-oekonomisches Panel – Ein Infrastrukturprojekt der empirischen Sozial- und Wirtschaftsforschung in Deutschland, Zeitschrift für Soziologie 38 (5), 350-357.

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Availability

The SOEP micro data which we make available for scientific research for a small fee can only be interpreted using statistical software.
Direct use of SOEP data is subject to the high standards for lawful data protection in the Federal Republic of Germany. Signing a contract on data distribution with the DIW Berlin is therefore a precondition for working with SOEP data. After signing the contract, the data of every new wave will be sent on request via certified mail (and cannot be received via the Internet or email due to security considerations).
more information

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Online documentation and updates

The SOEP provides detailled information about the survey and the generated variables, please look for details here.

Version specific changes in the dataset.

 Known bugs/fixes after distributing the DVDs.


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