The Research Data Center of the Leibniz Institute for Educational Trajectories (LIfBi-FDZ) now offers a low-threshold introduction to working with the Scientific Use Files of the National Education Panel (NEPS) with the new NEPScomp data package. NEPScomp provides a compact and easy-to-understand selection of data from the National Education Panel. This enables even beginners to perform reliable analyses on a wide range of questions in empirical educational research. NEPScomp is particularly aimed at use in university teaching and is also suitable for student theses.
Two considerations were central to its development: On the one hand, there is a growing need in studies and teaching for well-documented, high-quality longitudinal data that can be used for empirical statistical training or for theses. On the other hand, NEPScomp is intended to facilitate entry into the complex data world of the National Education Panel—especially for students and teachers.
“Good research starts with good data—NEPScomp offers both quality and comprehensibility. We deliberately designed the dataset so that it can be easily handled even by inexperienced data users, while still allowing for empirically robust analyses,” says Dr. Daniel Fuß, head of the LIfBi-FDZ.
NEPScomp supplements the existing NEPS data offering. It is based on the regular scientific use files of the initial cohorts 1 to 6, but has a much simpler structure. For each initial cohort, there are eight thematically sorted data sets with the same structure. This makes it easier to combine information from different data sets and to handle the data as a whole. An accompanying manual describes all simplifications and provides practical tips for handling the data. Access to NEPScomp is granted via a NEPS data use agreement. Those who register can download the compact data package, as well as the regular scientific use files of the national education panel, free of charge and use them for scientific evaluations.
NEPScomp is designed as a dynamic offering. The LIfBi-FDZ will regularly revise the data and continue to adapt it to the needs of users. The online platform “Forum4MICA” has a separate category for this purpose, where interested parties can exchange ideas, get help, and provide feedback.
NEPScomp is one way of implementing the current recommendations of the Society for Empirical Educational Research (GEBF) on handling data collection in schools.
To the NEPScomp dataset
To the data use application
To Forum4Mica
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