The German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) started in 1984 and is one the longest-running household surveys in the world. About 30,000 individuals or 15,000 households are being interviewed for the panel annually. A representative samples for the German population is asked a relatively stable set of questions (socio-economic variables as well as well-being, attitutude, personality and life events) on a repeated basis. These repeated measurements (known as panel data) allow for sophisticated statistical analyses (e. g. fixed effects).
In the seminar we analyse practice data which can readily be downloaded from the SOEP webpage in order to get an idea of the data structure. For our empirical projects we have access to a comprehensive teaching data set which encompasses about 50% of the total observations. More information on the teaching data can be found on:
- SOEP in the Classroom: DIW Berlin: SOEP in the College Classroom
- A variable search engine: https://paneldata.org/
- The online companion: http://companion.soep.de/
- The current version 35 data: DIW Berlin: soep.v35
Here are some questions from SOEP individual questionnaire 2016:
How many nights total did you spend in the hospital last year, that is, in 2015?
Question 124 in SOEP individual questionnaire (2016)
How tall are you?
Question 119 in SOEP individual questionnaire (2016)
How satisfied are you with your life, all things considered?
Question 175 in SOEP individual questionnaire (2016)
How often do you drink alcohol?
Question 115 in SOEP individual questionnaire (2016)
SOEP Data Protection Contract
The teaching data requires a data protection contract from every student. The corresponding form is a mandatory precondition for taking the course, it can be downloaded here:
SOEP Tutorial Series
The SOEP tutorial series can be found on Youtube. It encompasses 6 short videos that explain its topics, sample development, questionnaires, data structures and more: