The Annual Meeting of the Verein für Socialpolitik took place from September 7 to 10, 2014, at the Helmut Schmidt University/University of the Federal Armed Forces Hamburg under the title “Evidence-based economic policy”. The program went beyond this economic framework to include evidence-based policy advice across all disciplines. This itself provided numerous links to hold informative talks with conference participants at the LIfBi information booth about available NEPS data, as one of the founding aims of the NEPS is to facilitate data-based recommendations for the political field.

From September 15 to 17, 2014, the 79th Meeting of the Subdivision Educational Research (Arbeitsgruppe Empirische Pädagogische Forschung) also took place in Hamburg, at Hamburg University. Anna Prosch, Hamburg University (member of the NEPS Consortium), presented a lecture on the “Assessment of orthographic competence in Grade 4 of the National Educational Panel Study (NEPS)”, which she had developed together with Dr. Christian Lorenz, LIfBi, and Prof. Dr. Inge Blatt, also Hamburg University. With regard to data already released as Scientific Use Files (SUF) on students from fifth and ninth grade, her findings reported on pre- and experimental studies prior to instrument administration in the field. The presentation on “The development of student achievement after grade repetition—Longitudinal (secondary) analyses within the framework of the NEPS” by Paul Fabian alongside Dr. Katja Scharenberg and Prof. Dr. Wilfried Bos (all Institute for School Development Research, IFS, at TU Dortmund, another member of the NEPS Consortium) addressed the possibilities of using NEPS data to estimate the effects of grade repetition.

From September 21 to 25, 2014, the 49th Congress of the German Society for Psychology took place in Bochum under the title “Diversity of psychology”. Sarah Bürger, German Institute for International Educational Research (Deutsches Institut für Internationale Pädagogische Forschung, DIPF, also member of the NEPS Consortium) gave a lecture on the question “Are there any differences between paper- and computer-based administrations of reading comprehension tests? The analysis of mode effects in NEPS”. Her contribution was made in cooperation with Dr. Ulf Kröhne and Prof. Dr. Frank Goldhammer (both also DIPF). Dr. Inga Hahn and Dr. Jan Marten Ihme (both Leibniz Institute for Science and Mathematics Education, IPN, also member of the NEPS Consortium), hosted a symposium under the title “Validating NEPS competence tests [in ICT literacy, mathematics, and natural sciences]”. In addition, LIfBi staff Dr. Ilka Wolter and Dr. Lysann Zander (Free University Berlin) together presented “How gender role orientations of preschool teachers affect the concept of gender roles as well as the academic self-concept of children in elementary school”.

From October 6 to 10, 2014, the 37th Congress of the German Sociological Association took place at the University of Trier. Under the contemporary diagnostic motto “Routines of crisis—Crisis of routines” sociologists addressed the omnipresent crisis scenarios from the financial and debt crisis to the state and legitimation crisis, to the crises of the educational system and of the public, as well as the political crisis. As a genuine science of crises, sociology to the present day has always approached crises as an endemic phenomenon of modernization that can and will continue to be identified in a theoretical way as well as being described and treated empirically. Due to their thematic breadth—which goes beyond educational processes to also include micro-, meso-, and macro-levels of quantitative social (data) analysis—the potential of NEPS data, which are made available by the LIfBi, were a much discussed and often inquired topic at the Institute’s information booth, despite or even because of the study’s widespread reputation in these disciplines. 

The National Educational Panel combines methods and questions from the fields of sociology, psychology, educational research, and economics in a nationwide network of excellence. Data from this study are being used by related disciplines with an increasing dynamic. Currently, 430 research projects avail of the data products offered by the Research Data Center of the LIfBi. The requests and discussions registered at the LIfBi information booth at the relevant meetings and congresses are indicating a continuously increasing number of NEPS data users.