Forschung SOEP: Survey-Methodologie und Data Science

Composition of Core Modules and Item Allocation in Split Questionnaire Designs: Impact on Estimates from Imputed Data

An increasing number of social science surveys use split questionnaire designs to reduce questionnaire length, presenting only a subset of several questionnaire modules to each respondent while leaving out others. This approach results in large amounts of planned missing data that necessitates imputation. Research shows that imputation is most effective when each module covers various topics. Yet, ...

Dealing with Censored Earnings in Register Data

Earnings are often top-coded (right-censored) in administrative registers. The censoring threshold in the case of Germany is the limit value for social security contributions, leading to a substantial fraction of censoring: For example, about 12%of male workers inWest Germany are affected, rising to above 30% for highly educated prime-aged workers. This missing right tail of the earnings distribution ...

From Concurrent to Push-To-Web Mixed-Mode: Experimental Design Change in the German Social Cohesion Panel

Research shows that concurrent and sequential self-administered mixed-mode designs both have advantages and disadvantages in terms of panel survey recruitment and maintenance. Since concurrent mixed-mode designs usually achieve higher initial response rates at lower bias than sequential mixed-mode designs, the former may be ideal for panel recruitment. However, concurrent designs produced high share ...

Exploring Integration and Migration Dynamics: The Research Potentials of a Large-Scale Longitudinal Household Study of Refugees in Germany

Forced migration has intensified in the 21st century, driven by conflicts, persecution, and political instability in regions such as the Middle East, Afghanistan, the Horn of Africa, South-East Asia, Latin America and, most recently, Ukraine. Germany has become a primary destination for refugees within the European Union and one of the largest among the OECD countries. The IAB-BAMF-SOEP Refugee Survey, ...

Education Bias in Probability-Based Surveys in Germany: Evidence and Possible Solutions

This paper outlines two studies on education bias in German probability-based surveys. Study 1 reviews data from 67 surveys across 19 survey programs conducted in Germany from 2000 to 2023. We found a consistent underrepresentation of individuals with a low level of formal education. We also found that the transition to self-administered modes due to rising survey costs may exacerbate this bias in ...

Historical Changes in Control Belief Trajectories

The present research examines whether and how well-documented historical changes in resource availability, social embedding, technology, and social norms also manifest in control beliefs—a key psychological marker of individual health and well-being. Drawing on longitudinal data from five waves of the German Socio-Economic Panel (N = 42,158) spanning over 20 years, we analyzed control belief trajectories ...

Does Having Daughters Affect Political Preferences? Using Meta-Analytic Tools on Many Surveys

This study investigates whether having daughters impacts political preferences and whether this effect varies across European countries. We estimate effect sizes for 39 countries in the European Social Survey (n = 156,236) and aggregate estimates using random-effects meta-analysis, following a preregistered analysis plan. We find significant evidence that having daughters increases the preference for ...

SOEP Annual Report 2025

Measuring Ambiguity Attitudes Reliably in Surveys

This seminar introduces ambiguity, explains why it matters in economics, and discusses how ambiguity attitudes are typically measured in empirical research. Ambiguity plays an important role in decision-making, as most situations in life involve unknown outcomes or probabilities. However, people’s attitudes toward ambiguity are hard to measure precisely, as standard measures based on incentivized...

Zuverlässige Erfassung der Einstellung gegenüber Mehrdeutigkeit in Umfragen

Der englische Originaltitel des Seminars lautet: “Measuring Ambiguity Attitudes Reliably in Surveys”. Die Präsentation findet auf Englisch statt. Eine kurze Zusammenfassung zum Vortrag ist nur auf der englischen Veranstaltungsseite verfügbar!