On October 12, 2011, an expert workshop for occupational coding took place in Mannheim. The main reason for this was that GESIS – the Leibniz Institute for Social Sciences has stopped its offer of occupational coding. The workshop should therefore determine future requirements in the field of occupational coding and several potential providers had the opportunity to present themselves. Furthermore, a general exchange between the different actors in the field of occupational coding should be made possible.
One part of the workshop was the presentation of several service providers for occupational coding, among others the IEA Data Processing and Research Center, the infas institute for applied social science, and TNS Infratest. The National Educational Panel Study was also represented on the workshop as it will provide different services in this field for data users in future.
In a second part, a qualitative comparison of
different coding providers took place. Conformities of double-coded material were presented and deviations were discussed. Afterwards, representatives of the Institute for Employment Research and the Federal German Employment Agency presented the transition from the classification of occupations 2010 (KldB2010) to ISCO-O8. SHARE (Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe), pairfam (Panel Analysis of Intimate Relationships and Family Dynamics), PIAAC (Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies) and many other studies took part in the workshop. They referred to their potential needs, particular requests and quality criteria for coding. An open discussion completed the day.