Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832), considered by some to be the greatest German writer, employed a number of sophisticated strategies in his dealings with publishers. None of them is as intriguing as the one appearing in Goethe's letter, dated January 16, 1797, to the publisher Vieweg...

Das Sozio-oekonomische Panel (SOEP) ist als multidisziplinäres Haushaltspanel, das Informationen zu allen Personen, die in einem Panel-Haushalt leben, erhebt und damit alle Altersjahrgänge abdeckt, nach 25 Jahren Laufzeit auch zu einer Kohorten- Studie geworden. Der zunehmende Erfolg der...

How socio-cultural contexts shape individual functioning is of prime interest for psychological inquiry. Secular increases favoring later-born cohorts in fluid intelligence measures are widely documented for young adults. In the current study, we quantify such trends in old age using data from...

"Die meisten Menschen sind die meiste Zeit über glücklich" stellt in einer Zusammenfassung vieler empirischer Studien Biswas-Diener (2009) fest. Sogar nach einschneidenden Negativerlebnissen wie Arbeitslosigkeit oder dem Verlust des Partners passen sich die meisten Menschen recht schnell an...

The German Socio Economic Panel Study (SOEP) offers the rare opportunity to look at patterns of given names amongst a representative sample of more than 50,000 people born since 1900. This article develops an exemplary picture of typical frequency distributions for given names and their...

Since it is still unclear to what extent time allocation retrospectively reported in questionnaires, reflects people's actual behavior, examining the accuracy of responses to time use survey questions is of crucial importance. We analyze the congruence of time use information assessed through...

Self-reported measures of health are generally treated as weak measures of respondents' objective health status. On the other hand, most surveys use self-reported health to measure health status and to determine the effects of a range of other socio-economic characteristics of the local...

There are strong two-way links between parent and child happiness (life satisfaction), even for 'children' who have grown up, moved to their own home and partnered themselves. German panel evidence shows that transmission of (un)happiness from parents to children is partly due to transmission of...

Interest in the effects of sleeping behavior on health and performance is continuously increasing - both in research and with the general public. Ecologically valid investigations of this research topic necessitate the measurement of sleep within people's natural living contexts. We present...

The Berlin Aging Study II (BASE-II) is a multidisciplinary study that allows for the investigation of how a multitude of health status factors as well as many other social and economic outcomes interplay. The sample consists of 1,600 participants aged 60 to 80, and 600 participants aged 20 to...