Related Studies

More than 950,000 refugees from Ukraine have sought protection in Germany since the Russian invasion on February 24, 2022. The project “Refugees from Ukraine in Germany” will create the first representative database on this group of people, on the conditions that led them to flee, and on their integration into German society. The findings drawn from these data will lay the foundation for groundbreaking policy research and political decision-making.

The project partners plan to present the first scientific findings at the end of 2022. Researchers who are interested in analyzing the survey data will be able to obtain them from the SOEP Research Data Center (SOEP-FDZ), the IAB, and FReDA based at the BIB.

The current study ties in with the IAB-BAMF-SOEP Survey of Refugees, which has been ongoing since 2016, and FReDA. After the first two waves of the survey are completed, the panel on Ukrainian refugees will continue within these existing social scientific data infrastructures. This second phase of the project will create the possibility to gain long-term knowledge about refugees from Ukraine - both about their integration experiences in Germany and about their possible return or onward migration.

Find more information on the project site

The Berlin Aging Study II (BASE-II) is an extension and expansion of the Berlin Aging Study (BASE). This new study with more than 2,200 participants of different ages aims to complement the analysis of cognitive development across the lifespan by including socio-economic and biological factors such as living conditions, health, and genetic preconditions. The study is funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research.

Participants are involved in the annual survey of the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) and provide information about their life situation and living conditions.
 
The Charité's Geriatrics Research Group at the Evangelisches Geriatriezentrum Berlin carries out the medical sessions. Data on the following domains are collected:

• Objective health (e.g., cardiovascular system, musculosceletal system, immune system),
• Functional capacity (e.g., physical capacity, vision, hearing, balance),
• Subjective health and well-being

Genetic analyses carried out in collaboration with the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics can provide information about the effects of genetic differences on physical and mental development processes.

Data protection regulations are strictly followed during all assessments. The data are exclusively used for scientific purposes.

More information about BASE-II on the project's homepage.

SOEP-RS BASE II 2008-2014 – Erhebungsinstrumente Berliner Altersstudie II (PDF, 16.99 MB)
TNS Infratest Sozialforschung 

The Socio-Economic Module of the Berlin Aging Study II (SOEP-BASE): Description, Structure, and Questionnaire (PDF, 0.6 MB)
Anke Böckenhoff, Denise Saßenroth, Martin Kroh, Thomas Siedler, Peter Eibich and Gert G. Wagner

Selectivity Processes in and Weights for the Berlin Aging Study II (BASE-II) (PDF, 1.23 MB)
Denise Saßenroth, Martin Kroh and Gert G. Wagner

DOI: 10.5684/dsa-03

The survey contains mainly closed multiple-choice questions as rating scales. It covers questions on sociodemographics, the individual working context of the researcher, publication preferences, common impediments and incentives for sharing data and, expectations for using secondary data. The survey instrument is based on a previous study, consisting of a systematic review of data sharing studies and a secondary data user survey.

We conducted the online survey from October to November 2014. It was administered online via LimeSurvey. We contacted the faculty heads of 60 German universities. We selected them based on the number of students and chose the 20 largest, the 20 smallest and 20 medium-sized ones. Additionally we contacted the scientific directors of the four biggest German research organizations—the Max Planck Society, the Leibniz Association, the Helmholtz Association, and the Fraunhofer Gesellschaft—and asked these organizations to forward the survey to researchers within their institute. We also uploaded a link to the survey on our project website and on the website of the German Data Forum. Additionally, we sent the survey to our institutional mailing lists (e.g., Leibniz institutes, and the Global Network of Interdisciplinary Internet & Society Research Centers). In the emails to the faculty leaders and in the introductory text of the survey, we specifically addressed researchers that work with data. That being said, our sample is a convenience sample and not representative of the entire population of academic researchers in Germany or worldwide.

Data privacy statement and data access

Data privacy statement (from the questionnaire): Your participation in this survey is voluntary and your responses will be saved in anonymous form. No record is kept of any names or addresses. The data will be provided initially to the researchers involved for their own analysis and after approximately one year will be made available for secondary use by the academic research community under strict adherence to the legal data protection provisions applying to the Research Data Center of the Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP).

The SOEP questionnaires were tested nearly every year for the following wave. The aim of these pretests was to test new modules and modifications of questions.
The SOEP pretests from 2004 -2011 went far beyond the standard format of a pretest: The sample size was around 1,000 respondents per year and can be considered representative of the German resident population aged 16 and older. Behavioral economics experiments were conducted in some pretests.
Within SOEP, there are two main differences between the pretests and the main SOEP-Core survey:

• First, all interviews in the SOEP pretests were programmed as CAPI versions (in contrast, some of the interviews in the main survey were based on PAPI versions). Therefore, the SOEP pretests were particularly useful for testing experimental designs.
• Second, the SOEP pretests were designed in a much simpler way: whereas in the main survey all members of a household aged 16 and older were interviewed, in the pretest there was only one questionnaire to be filled in by one member of a household.

The respective pretest sample was not related to the main survey, so that these respondents neither participated in SOEP-CORE nor were interviewed longitudinally. The interviews of the SOEP pretests were usually conducted in the period from August 1 to August 31. Typically, the duration of a single interview was about 45 minutes.

The pretests are documented exclusively by the survey institute's method reports.
The questionnaires used are usually included there in German.

You can find them on this site.