SOEP Research: Survey Methodology and 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, ...

The German Artificial Intelligence Experience and Attitude Survey (AIEAS): A Brief Measure for Socio-Economic Panel Studies

Despite the profound impact of artificial intelligence (AI) in diverse contexts, large-scale socio-economic panel studies have rarely addressed the use and evaluation of AI for individual respondents. Therefore, the Artificial Intelligence Experience and Attitude Survey (AIEAS) is introduced to measure awareness, experience, attitude valence, and usage intention regarding AI in the work, healthcare, ...

Heterogeneity in Gender Differences in Self-Reported Political Preferences, Trust, and Well-Being across 39 European Countries

Previous research suggests that women tend to self-report higher life satisfaction and happiness, lower health status and trust, and more left-leaning political preferences than men. We revisit the gender gap in these outcome variables using random-effects meta-analysis, aggregating data across 39 countries surveyed in the European Social Survey (n ≈ 500,000). Measured in Cohen’s d units, women, on ...

Learn to use the SOEP over lunch

The German Socio-Economic Panel Study is a representative panel study for the German population, collecting data on a broad variety of topics of everyday life, including general well-being, household composition, educational aspirations and educational status, income and occupational biographies, leisure time activities, housing, health, political orientation and more. With its long-running panel...

SOEPcampus@DIW Berlin 2026

On October 6 and 7, 2026, we are organizing a two-day workshop on the Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) at DIW Berlin. In addition to presentations on the composition, data structure, sampling design, and weighting strategy, hands-on sessions will offer a practical approach to the data and its potential. The workshop is aimed at researchers at all qualification levels who want to work with SOEP data in...

Learn to use the SOEP over lunch

The German Socio-Economic Panel Study is a representative panel study for the German population, collecting data on a broad variety of topics of everyday life, including general well-being, household composition, educational aspirations and educational status, income and occupational biographies, leisure time activities, housing, health, political orientation and more. With its long-running panel...

Dynamic Networks of Social Contact, Social Desire, and Affect Across Time Scales

Social relationships are central to well-being because they fulfill social affiliation needs. To explain how social needs are regulated, theories describe daily-life processes among social desire, social contact, and affect. Still, these processes remain empirically underexplored because of their complexity. In this study, we estimated multivariate associations of social desire and affect with social ...

Register now for the online workshop series SOEPcampus: Learn to use the SOEP over lunch

In March/April 2026 our online over lunch seminar series returns with one last workshop this year. The workshop provides a comprehensive, practical introduction to the data of the Socio-economic Panel (SOEP) on three Wednesdays during lunchtime. Participants will learn about the study's content, data structure, sample selection, and weighting strategy, along with an overview of the study documentation. To ...

SOEP User Conference 2026 - Call for Papers

The call for papers for the 16th International German Socio-Economic Panel User Conference is online. SOEP 2026 will take place from July 8-9, 2026, in Berlin, and researchers from all disciplines are invited to submit an abstract. We particularly welcome contributions addressing meta-science, robustness, replicability, reproducibility, and open science. This includes, but is not limited to, studies ...

Who stays? Tracking ultra-long-time participants in the SOEP