Surveying Lifelong Learning in the German National Educational Panel Study

• Author: Marie‐Christine Laible,Basha Vicari,Annette Trahms,Silke Anger
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8462.12332
• Published date: 01 September 2019
• Date: 01 September 2019

The Australian Economic Review, vol. 52, no. 3, pp. 353–362 DOI: 10.1111/1467-8462.12332

Data Survey

Surveying Lifelong Learning in the German National

Educational Panel Study

Silke Anger, Marie‐Christine Laible, Annette Trahms and Basha Vicari*

Abstract

This article outlines the German National

Educational Panel Study, which collects

comprehensive data on lifelong learning in a

multi‐cohort sequence design, covering early

childhood, childhood, adolescence, young

adulthood and adulthood. It outlines data

collection for all the cohorts and educational

phases across the life course whilst focusing

on the educational stage ‘Adult Education and

Lifelong Learning’. Data can be accessed for

academic purposes as scientific use files under

data contract.

1. Introduction

The German National Educational Panel

Study (NEPS) started in 2009 with the

core objective of collecting and providing

representative data on complete educational

biographies and, for adult individuals, em-

ployment histories (Blossfeld, Rossbach and

von Maurice, 2011; Blossfeld and Rossbach,

2019). This involves the collection of detailed

longitudinal data on educational processes

across the lifespan: from newborn infants to

retirees. This new data collection was devel-

oped to deepen the understanding of educa-

tional decisions, to observe the development

of specific competences over time and to

describe the consequences of educational

acquisition for an individual’s life course in

detail. In particular, the NEPS aims to fill the

gap in the availability of representative, large‐

scale studies that observe relevant factors in

the decision‐making processes at critical

transitions of the educational career. It there-

fore covers the lifelong acquisition of compe-

tences, starting from learning in the family, in

kindergarten, in school, at college, in voca-

tional training and during further training in

the workplace and beyond. Moreover, the

NEPS covers both individual and contextual

factors, as it combines data collected from

children, their parents, caregivers, teachers

and principals, with institutional information

on kindergartens, schools and colleges.

The purpose of this article is to provide

education researchers, economists and social

scientists with an overview of the NEPS.

* Anger: Institute for Employment Research (IAB),

Research Department Education, Training, and Employment

Over the Life Course, Nuremberg, Germany; Otto‐Friedrich‐

Universität Bamberg, Faculty of Social Sciences, Economics,

and Business Administration, Bamberg, Germany; Institute

for the Study of Labor (IZA), Bonn, Germany; Laible,

Trahms and Vicari: Institute for Employment Research

(IAB), Research Department Education, Training, and

Employment Over the Life Course, Nuremberg, Germany.

Corresponding author: Anger, email <silke.anger@iab.de>.

The authors would like to thank John Haisken‐DeNew for

encouraging this overview for the Australian research

community, and for invaluable help in developing this article

and providing information on the Australian data.

© 2019 The Authors. The Australian Economic Review published by John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd on behalf of The University of

Melbourne, Melbourne Institute: Applied Economic & Social Research, Faculty of Business and Economics

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and

reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.