SOEP Research: Survey Methodology and Data Science

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...

Who Benefits from Place-based Policies? Evidence from Matched Employer-Employee Data (with Philipp Grunau, Florian Hoffmann, and Thomas Lemieux)

We study the wage and employment effects of a German place-based policy using a research design that exploits conditionally exogenous EU-wide rules governing the program parameters at the regional level. The place-based program subsidizes investments to create jobs with a subsidy rate that varies across labor market regions. The analysis uses matched data on the universe of establishments and...

The #ManyDaughters Study is Officially Kicking Off!

We are happy to announce the launch of the #ManyDaughters Study, an international research initiative exploring how having daughters influences behavior, preferences, and attitudes. Researchers from all fields of social sciences are invited to participate in this collaborative project, which will use data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) to test four key hypotheses on the impact of daughters ...

Revision and Cross-cultural Adaptation of the Human Values Scale for Self-completion Modes

Since its first round, the European Social Survey (ESS) has included a 21-item measure of ten basic human values shared across cultures, known as the Human Values Scale (HVS), developed by Shalom H. Schwartz. Recently, the scale has been revised to a new 20-item HVS with shorter, simpler items (usually only one sentence instead of two sentences per item in the past version) and introducing a single ...

Gratitude in Fundraising: Do ‘Thank You in Advance’ and Handwritten Thank You Notes Impact Fundraising Success?

While almost all charities rely on a set of donor appreciation strategies, their effectiveness for the success of fundraising campaigns is underresearched. Through two preregistered field studies conducted in collaboration with a leading German opera house (N = 10,000), we explore the significance of expressing gratitude and examine two different approaches to doing so. Our first study investigates ...

KonsortSWD (Phase 2)

KonsortSWD - Consortium for the Social, Behavioural, Educational and Economic Sciences in the National Research Data Infrastructure (NFDI)Researchers in the social, behavioral, educational, and economic sciences work with different types of data that are considered particularly sensitive due to legal or ethical restrictions and that were not originally collected for research purposes. KonsortSWD...

Lohnt sich ein CAWI-Follow-Up für Face-to-Face? Erste Ergebnisse aus der IAB-BAMF-SOEP-Befragung von Geflüchteten

Younger Adults’ Nuclear and Extended Family Relationships in Europe: A Latent Class Analysis

The present study identifies and compares typical classes of relationship qualities in the nuclear and extended family ties of younger adults across nine European countries (Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, the United Kingdom, as well as the Nordic countries Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden). We used KINMATRIX data that were collected online in 2022-23 from an ego-centric perspective of ...

Effects of Changing the Incentive Strategy on Panel Performance: Experimental Evidence From a Probability-Based Online Panel of Refugees

This study investigated how changing the mode of incentive administration between two panel waves, spaced six months apart, affected longitudinal survey response. A split-ballot incentive experiment was used to compare shifting from an unconditional pre-paid incentive mode in the first wave to a conditional post-paid mode in the second wave, versus consistently using a conditional post-paid mode across ...

Post-Migration Stress Mediates Associations Between Potentially Traumatic Peri-Migration Experiences and Mental Health Among Middle Eastern Refugees in Germany

Background On their way to host countries, refugees are often exposed to severe adversity, including cumulative experiences of fraud, extortion, robbery, detention, and shipwrecks, as well as prolonged, life-threatening small boat crossings. However, little research has examined the long-term impact of such peri-migration stressors on subsequent stress and mental health after arrival. This study explored ...