This paper demonstrates how quality of life can be measured by plain text in a representative survey, the German Socio Economic Panel Study (SOEP). Furthermore, the paper shows that problems that are difficult to monitor, especially problems like the state of the European Union, long-term...

Using a unique dataset we study both the actual and self-perceived relationship between subjective well-being and income comparisons against a wide range of potential comparison groups, enabling us to investigate a broader range of questions than in previous studies. In questions inserted into a...

Background: Effort-reward imbalance (ERI) is an established conceptualisation of work stress. Although a validated effort-reward questionnaire is available for public use, many epidemiological studies adopt shortened scales and proxy measures. To examine the agreement between different...

Like many medical studies, the Berlin Aging Study II (BASE-II) is based on a non-random "gconvenience sample" of self-recruited participants. To study processes of selectivity in BASE-II, we used a questionnaire to compare BASE-II with a large, representative reference study, the German...

We investigate how worries in Germany change across time and age, drawing on both closed-ended questions (which typically list a number of worry items) and open-ended questions answered in text format. We find that relevant world events influence worries. For example, worries about peace peaked...

Political representatives frequently make decisions with far-reaching implications for citizens and societies. Most of these decisions are choices in situations in which the probabilities of gains and losses are hard to estimate. Although decision-making is crucial to politics, existing research...

Haushaltspanels wurden weltweit vorwiegend zu dem Zweck begonnen, die Dynamik der Einkommensverteilung und -armut abzubilden; die erste Panelstudie, die 1968 begonnene PSID, führt diesen Aspekt sogar im Namen: Panel Study of Income Dynamics. Entsprechend liegen sehr viele Veröffentlichungen...

Dieser Aufsatz ist der Frage der Weiterentwicklung des SOEP insgesamt gewidmet. Daher nehmen wir in einem ersten Teil eine Bestandsaufnahme der Entscheidungsstrukturen zum Erhebungsprogramm ("Governance") vor. Im zweiten Abschnitt beschäftigen wir uns mit den Inhalten der SOEP-Erhebung - also...

Im Januar des Jahres 2008 begann die Feldarbeit der 25. Welle des SOEP. Im Jahr 2009 werden damit etwa 2 500 anonymisierte Datensätze von Personen zur Auswertung zur Verfügung stehen, die seit 1984 ununterbrochen an 25 Befragungen in den westdeutschen SOEP-Teilstichproben A und B teilgenommen...