In the spring of this year, the spread of Covid-19 infections led to the closure of care facilities and schools as well as the restriction of personal contacts throughout Germany. In order to avoid additional risk to the families interviewed as well as to the interviewers, the personal interview that was ongoing at that time as part of the study "ReGES - Refugees in the German Educational System" was therefore interrupted. At this point, about 40% of the participants had already been interviewed. Since it was not possible to postpone the face-to-face interviews, the survey was switched to telephone interviews for the 2,040 adolescents and families who had not yet been interviewed. Appropriate references were added to some of the questions so that they related to the situation prior to the pandemic situation. In addition, questions related to the lockdown were added as a new element. This approach ensures comparability with data from both survey modes (in-person and telephone). In addition, it was possible to collect highly relevant data on the impact of the pandemic on participants' life situations.

In contrast to the face-to-face interviews, the planned computer-based skills tests could not be conducted in the telephone interview mode. In the course of data processing by the LIfBi Research Data Center, it will be made transparent which data were collected in which mode. The publication of the scientific-use files of the first survey wave of the ReGES project, which will be made available to education researchers worldwide, is planned for mid-2021.

For more information on how lockdown was handled during the ongoing ReGES study, see the following publication:

Will, G., Becker, R., & Weigand, D. (2020). COVID-19 lockdown during field work. Survey Research Methods, 14(2), 247-252. https://doi.org/10.18148/srm/2020.v14i2.7753

Background

Since 2016, the BMBF-funded project ReGES (funding code FLUCHT03) has been investigating under which conditions the integration of refugee children and adolescents into our education system can succeed: Which factors hinder or delay integration? Which offers contribute to the success of integration into our society? The aim is to investigate the integration process of young immigrants into the German education system and German society and to provide education researchers with comprehensive and data-protection-compliant data material for this purpose.