From the perspective of "competence development over the life course," the National Educational Panel develops models of structural differentiation and development levels of competencies over the entire life course. The focus is on the Recording and AnalysisNEPS Pillar: Development of Competencies over the Life CourseNEPS Pillar: Development of Competencies over the Life Course of the development of subject-specific and generic competencies.

The National Educational Panel conducts longitudinal measurements of language competence in German (reading competence and listening comprehension), mathematical and scientific competence, and competence in dealing with information,computers and technology (ICT literacy). The emphasis on educational processes and competence development over the life course calls for a perspective that takes into account both the processes occurring within a learning environment and diachronic (longitudinal) and synchronous (simultaneous) transitions between different learning environments.

Thus, a main task of this area is the development of test instruments that enable the measurement of the mentioned competence areas over the life course. In addition, the further development of computer- and Internet-based competence diagnostics is an important task within the framework of the National Educational Panel in order to optimize the efficiency and precision of longitudinal testing on representative samples. Efficiency here refers to aspects of cost reduction and time saving. Precision refers to the opportunity to take a further step toward comparability and approximation to reality with the help of technology-based adaptive tests.