Pretests

Dataset Description

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.