The national educational panel study: Milestones of the years 2006 to 2015

Abstract

Funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung—BMBF), the National Educational Panel Study (Nationales Bildungspanel—NEPS) started in August 2008 with the aim of collecting urgently required longitudinal data about educational processes and competence development from early childhood to late adulthood. As of January 2014, the NEPS is now situated at the newly founded Leibniz Institute for Educational Trajectories (Leibniz-Institut für Bildungsverläufe—LIfBi). The NEPS provides these data to the scientific community as quickly as possible after each data-collection sweep. During the years 2006 to 2015, several important milestones have been achieved by the NEPS team: First, an interdisciplinary network of excellence has been built up including the best educational researchers and research institutions in Germany—initially with the University of Bamberg as the home of the NEPS center. Second, a clear structure for the NEPS has been developed focusing on five substantively oriented pillars and eight life-course stages. Third, a multicohort sequence design was defined in order to be able to quickly collect and disseminate data on different educational stages and to enable an easy comparison of different cohorts. Fourth, six cohorts with more than 60,000 target persons (plus some 40,000 context persons) were sampled in educational institutions or based on register data. Fifth, innovative longitudinal instruments were designed by an interdisciplinary team of researchers bringing together relevant theories, concepts, and variables from various disciplines. Sixth, procedures in order to collect representative data based on different samples have been defined, following up individuals through their educational pathways. Seventh, an effective infrastructure for the dissemination of data to the scientific community in Germany and abroad, a program of introductory user courses, and a user support center have been set up. Data from all six NEPS cohorts have been released to date. More than 1,000 researchers from various disciplines are already using NEPS data. Eighth, the institutionalization under the umbrella of the Leibniz Association has created a long-term perspective for NEPS to establish itself as an infrastructure facility for educational research.