1 The National Educational Panel Study: need, main features, and research potential

摘要

The German National Educational Panel Study has been set up to study the acquisition of education, to assess the consequences of education for life courses, and to describe central education processes and trajectories across the entire life span. Funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research the National Educational Panel Study is organized as a network of excellence linking researchers from different disciplines. The life-course perspective is the pre-eminent theoretical characteristic of the National Educational Panel Study. While focusing on eight stages ranging over the entire life span, longitudinal integration will be ensured by a theoretical orientation toward five major dimensions: competence development, learning environments, social inequalities and educational decisions, educational processes of migrants, and returns to education. Methodologically, the National Educational Panel Study follows a multicohort sequence design starting with a total number of more than 60,000 target persons from six cohorts (early childhood, Kindergarten children, 5th graders, 9th graders, first-year college students, and adults who have already left the educational system in most cases). Different instruments including questionnaires and competence tests are being administered in all six cohorts. Each new wave of the panel study will be made available to the scientific community as fast as possible.