Grußwort anlässlich der 25. Welle des SOEP
25 Wellen des SOEP sind Anlass, sich an die Anfänge eines Projekts zu erinnern, das in schwierigen Zeiten begonnen wurde, und dem nicht alle die wissenschaftliche Bedeutung zutrauten, wie wir sie dann erlebt haben.
Es waren theoretische Überlegungen zur personellen Einkommensverteilung und die Einsicht in die sich abzeichnenden Möglichkeiten der elektronischen Datenverarbeitung, die mir klar gemacht hatten, dass angesichts dieser verbesserten Analysemöglichkeiten eine Mikro-Längsschnittdatenbasis für die Beantwortung vieler Fragen unserer sozialen Entwicklung unverzichtbar sein würde.
Die Durchsetzung eines solchen innovativen, und zudem auch noch teuren Projekts bedarf zunächst einmal des Engagements Einzelner, die für ihre Sache kämpfen, Rückschläge in Kauf nehmen und unbeirrt weiter machen. So etwas lag mir. Aber auch Ute Hanefeld, eine Nachwuchswissenschaftlerin, machte das SOEP zu ihrem ureigenen Projekt, für das sie unermüdlich an vielen Fronten kämpfte.
Und doch ist der Erfolg des Projekts nicht auf den Einsatz einzelner Personen zurück zu führen. Das SOEP war und ist ein überzeugendes Beispiel für die Chancen von Team-Arbeit in der Wissenschaft. Deswegen führte der Wechsel in der Leitung des SOEP, die 1988 kurzfristig von dem Soziologen Wolfgang Zapf übernommen wurde, weil ich als Finanzsenator nach Hamburg wechselte, und dann auf Gert Wagner überging, auch zu keinem Bruch in der Entwicklung. Das Gegenteil war vielmehr der Fall, Gert Wagner verdankt das SOEP immer wieder wesentliche Innovationen. Dabei war und ist nicht ein überzogener Wettbewerb einzelner Personen, sondern Kooperation das Erfolgsrezept. Dass es gelungen ist, diesen Geist zu erhalten, zeigen auch die heutigen Mitarbeiter des SOEP. Ich denke dabei insbesondere an Jürgen Schupp, der seit 1985 beim SOEP ist, und Joachim Frick, der 1989 dazu kam. Sie haben trotz ihrer Belastung in der Servicearbeit auch als hervorragende und anerkannte Forscher akademisch ihren Weg gemacht. Andere haben es geschafft Rufe an Universitäten und Fachhochschulen zu bekommen. Und die wissenschaftliche Kooperation greift inzwischen weit über das Team des SOEP hinaus.
Ausgangspunkt des SOEP war zunächst eine Forschergruppe, später ein DFG-Sonderforschungsbereich, in dem Wissenschaftler verschiedener Fächer in den Universitäten in Frankfurt am Main, Mannheim (und später auch Berlin) zusammen arbeiteten. Dazu kam aufgrund meiner dortigen Präsidentschaft die institutionelle Anbindung an das Deutsche Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung (DIW) in Berlin. Diese war, anders als es eine Universität gekonnt hätte, in der Lage, Kontinuität zu sichern. Andererseits konnte bereits damals nur die Zusammenarbeit mit den Universitäten die Enge eines Wirtschaftsforschungsinstituts überwinden.
Empirische Fundierung, Zusammenarbeit über enge Fachgrenzen hinweg, Einbeziehung unterschiedlicher wissenschaftlicher und gesellschaftspolitischer Positionen waren die Leitlinien unser Arbeit, auch wenn dies nicht gerade dem durch die 68er Bewegung geprägten Zeitgeist entsprach.
Es galt aber auch Synergien zu nutzen. Wenn mit öffentlichen Mitteln so wertvolle Daten erhoben wurden, musste eine breite Datennutzung erreicht werden. Dem entsprach unsere Politik der unverzögerten Datenweitergabe, die sicher wesentlich zum Erfolg des SOEP beigetragen hat. Es gibt auch heute noch Wissenschaftler, die von ihnen angeregte Daten zunächst alleine nutzen wollen. Das SOEP ist ein überzeugendes Beispiel dafür, dass gute Wissenschaftler so etwas nicht nötig haben.
Twenty-five years of SOEP: An international user's perspective
A famous physicist, began his acclaimed history of the universe with the sentence, “After the first thirty seconds all the interesting physics were over”. Just the opposite is true of SOEP and other great national socio-economic household panels. They get better with age. They exist to enable social scientists to describe and explain social and economic change, and draw out the public policy implications of change. Many public policies – for example, educational and other human capital investment policies, and policies related to retirement and pension schemes – are intended to bring about beneficial long term change. So it is essential to have panel studies which track and document long term change, including the impact of policies on change.
One of the keys to SOEP’s success has been its policy of making the data available almost free of charge to all academic users, including international users, who sign a straightforward confidentiality agreement. This policy is one of enlightened self-interest. Together with the high quality of the data, the policy has ensured that thousands of academics, world-wide, are aware of SOEP and hundreds use it for their own research; often in order to make international comparisons of social and economic change, or of public policy developments.
I may be SOEP’s most long distance user. I am also an old-time user, having first analysed the data in 1987 in Mannheim. In 1987 SOEP was in fact directed in Frankfurt and Mannheim, DIW Berlin was the junior partner, and I remember sitting in an old University of Mannheim house on the Rhine, trying to get an old Siemens computer to analyse these new exotic panel data.
Panel data were very new to European social scientists in the 1980s, so it was comparatively easy for us come up with new and apparently astonishing findings, which contradicted the received wisdom of the time. For example, in the late 1980s there was a concern that Germany was becoming ‘a two-thirds society’; a society in which two-thirds of the population had a comfortable lifestyle, while one-third were locked into poverty or near-poverty. There was some evidence to support that viewpoint, if one used only standard cross-sectional data. But panel studies were already beginning to show that many phenomena which had previously been thought of as characteristically long term, including poverty and welfare reliance, were more often short term. So we were able to show, with very straightforward analysis, that most income poverty in Germany was short term, and that nothing like one-third of society was locked into long term poverty. This is still, although for long term unemployment raised, the case.
Such simple descriptive research remains important, especially in the policy arena. But nowadays SOEP users are able to undertake much more elaborate, probing analyses which help to explain, as well as describe, social and economic changes. These analyses have become possible for three reasons (1) the availability of long term data (2) development of improved methods of panel data analysis and (3) historical developments which have created special research opportunities.
The very major historical development, which incidentally created opportunities for SOEP users, was of course German reunification. Labour economists, using SOEP, and observing what happened to East German employees whose human capital had become partly outmoded but could be refurbished, were able to gain new insights into the relative value and durability of different qualifications and labour market skills. In a similar vein, sociologists and economists studying child development, were able to use comparisons between the very different child care systems of East and West Germany to make improved evaluations of the impact of child care on children’s later educational performance.
When SOEP began, the data were mainly of interest to economists and sociologists. Indeed, the survey was under the direction of economists and sociologists. In the last decade or so, SOEP’s range of advisers has expanded. So the survey’s coverage has expanded to take in the interests of academics from other disciplines. Psychologists make use of measures of psychological traits and subjective evaluations, demographers and students of child development use new biographical data on the life course and data from the new ‘mother and child’ questionnaires, and health researchers can use new physiological measures and measures of physical and mental functioning.
In my view, one reason SOEP has been so successful is that, throughout its history, it has remained under academic direction. In many countries panel surveys have been started under Governmental direction. These surveys have generally died an early death. They fall victim to a Government cost-cutting exercise, or get cancelled because they bring unwelcome policy news. The key advantage of a panel study under academic direction, is, or ought to be, a commitment to innovation and a capacity to react rapidly to opportunities. The bold decision to get SOEP into East Germany during the first phase of transition, conducting interviews before reunification, when the former GDR occupational and educational systems were still in place, was a superb example of a desire to innovate and a capacity to react.
History will continue to throw up opportunities. May SOEP long be around to react!
Bruce Headey, University of Melbourne/Australia
(joined the SOEP-Survey Team for nine months – October 2007 until July 2008)
Address
The German Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP) is a cornerstone in the research infrastructure of socioeconomic and behavioral studies in Germany, Europe, and even the world. The data gathered from approximately 25,000 representative children and adults is the basis for the work of hundreds of German as well as international researchers. Thus the SOEP is an excellent example of the significant role of the Leibniz Association in the German research infrastructure.
The surveys of the SOEP are of great use for research and politics as well as for the general public. The high standard on which the SOEP staff, as all other institutions affiliated with the Leibniz Association, operates is ensured through regular external evaluations.
The SOEP is a panel study which is part of the research infrastructure-a challenge that can only be met when research and service are combined, since only those who practice research themselves will know what data other researchers need. The principal investigators of a panel study have to be able to anticipate upcoming research topics for the next few years, even decades, and shape the survey accordingly.
In general the Leibniz Association is committed to the balance between basic research and applied research. In addition, its goal is providing research infrastructure, academic service, and research-based policy advice. This bundle of aims is one of the main challenges for the SOEP, since the maintenance of such an extensive survey is very labor-intensive. Thus we were very pleased to see that the SOEP was one of three institutions that were rated "excellent" by the German Council of Science and Humanities ("Wissenschaftsrat") in its first research rating in the field of Sociology that took place in 2008. In addition, the SOEP was the only institution to be praised for its formidable combination of research, knowledge transfer, and policy advice. So as I have mentioned before, the SOEP is a prime example of an institution that embodies the ideals of the Leibniz Association.