TAEPS Data

About the TAEPS Study

“Teachers in Adult Education – a Panel Study” (TAEPS) focuses on teaching staff in adult and further education. The study is being conducted jointly by the German Institute for Adult Education – Leibniz Centre for Lifelong Learning (DIE, Bonn) and the Leibniz Institute for Educational Trajectories (LIfBi, Bamberg). In order to obtain a picture of the teaching staff that is as comprehensive as possible and to be able to analyze relevant developments, several thousand persons from all areas of adult education are surveyed up to three times over a period of five years about their professional situation and skills. The study also looks at further education offers. A survey of 1,000 companies, institutions and self-employed individuals provides insights into the type, scope and structure of such offerings.

TAEPS provides researchers with a sustainable source of data on the employment conditions, qualifications and skills of teaching staff in the overall context of adult and further education. In comparison to teachers from other areas of education, this study tackles a subject area for which there is still comparatively little empirically based knowledge.

Data Access

The edited and documented survey data from the TAEPS study is available free of charge for research purposes in the form of a Scientific Use File (SUF). Access to the data requires the conclusion of a Data Use Agreement. For this purpose, the completed and signed contract form must be sent to the LIfBi Research Data Center (fdz@lifbi.de). Within five working days, each person involved in the contract will receive an individual user ID and a password by e-mail to download the data. Amendments to the contract with regard to an extension of the term and/or the expansion of the group of involved persons are possible at any time via the Change Form. As some information from the TAEPS surveys is only accessible in the LIfBi data security area due to its sensitivity, an On-site Supplement to the contract is required for analyzing it.

Download Access

Data Use Agreement (PDF)

Extension/Expansion

Change Form (PDF)

On-site Access

Supplement Form (PDF)

Completing the Forms

Instructions (PDF)

Scientific Use File

The current SUF contains the data from the cross-sectional survey among institutions and the first panel survey among teaching staff in adult education. The data is available in both Stata and SPSS format with German and English language labels.

The download is possible for registered data users after logging in to this website with the personal user ID and the password.

Download SUF | TAEPS 1.1 | 2025/10/24

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Data Citation

Researchers are obliged to indicate the use of TAEPS data in their publications, including the DOI of the SUF version, by including the following citation in the bibliography:

Büchler, T., Fuß, D., Fervers, L., Herbrechter, D., Martin, A., Schrader, J., Bachbauer, N., & Fischer, J. (2025). Teachers in Adult Education (TAEPS), Scientific Use File 1.1. FDZ-LIfBi, Bamberg. https://doi.org/10.5157/TAEPS:SUF:1.1

In addition, the TAEPS study is to be acknowledged in an appropriate place in the publication:

This paper uses data from the study “Teachers in Adult Education – a Panel Study” (TAEPS) funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) until summer 2025 and thereafter by the Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space (BMFTR). The study is being conducted as a joint project by the German Institute for Adult Education – Leibniz Centre for Lifelong Learning (DIE, Bonn) and the Leibniz Institute for Educational Trajectories (LIfBi, Bamberg).

In accordance with the Data Usage Agreement, the LIfBi Research Data Center has to be informed immediately and unsolicited by e-mail (fdz@lifbi.de) about any kind of publication resulting from the work with TAEPS data.

Data Documentation

The documentation of the TAEPS data consists of a general introductory Manual, the Release Notes with current information on data preparation and the Scales Manual with details on the competence measurements, as well as the Codebook with univariate frequencies for all variables, the enriched SUF Instruments, the original Field Instruments used for the surveys, and the Field Reports on the implementation of the surveys by the responsible survey institute. The so-called “Data Structure File” is a freely accessible dataset that corresponds exactly to the SUF provided – but only contains metadata. All materials refer to SUF version 1.1.

Data Manual [en]

Compilation of basic information for understanding and working with the SUF data (PDF)

Release Notes [en]

Notes on problems and solutions to the data of the current SUF plus SUF version history (TXT)

Scales Manual [de]

Documentation of scales and items, including competency measurements from wave 1 of the panel survey (PDF)

Data Structure File [de/en]

Datasets of the current SUF in Stata and SPSS format without survey data, but with all the meta information (ZIP)

Codebook [de]

Frequency distribution of all variables in the datasets of the current SUF with German-language labels (PDF)

Codebook [en]

Frequency distribution of all variables in the datasets of the current SUF with English-language labels (PDF)