24.08.2005
In 2005, the SOEP group together with our field work agency TNS Infratest Sozialforschung, carried out extensive checks on all regional identifiers in the SOEP data such as administrative districts and federal states. Firstly, this enabled us to replace missing values of regional identifiers even in past years with valid information. Secondly, in some cases the regional identifiers $BULA and $SAMPREG have been corrected for former waves. Based on these changes, all information concerning regional identifiers in the SOEP should be consistent.
The checks mentioned above have been finialized after the data production of our most recent CD-Rom (up to wave U, 2004). If you are interested in using the corrected information you may apply the following statements.