Dr. Jan Skopek was born in Fuerth, Germany, in 1978 and studied economics and business administration at the department of economics and social sciences at the Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nuremberg from 1999 to 2004. During the course of study one of his focuses was information technology. He holds a scholarship of the Diplom-Kaufmann-Herrmann-Weiler-Stiftung. From January 2005 to september 2010, he was a member of research staff at the department of sociology I (Prof. Dr. rer. pol. Dr. h.c. Hans-Peter Blossfeld), Otto-Friedrich-University Bamberg. He finished his Dissertation in November 2010. In theoretical terms he is interested in modelling social processes using concepts of rational choice theory. His research activity is focused a sociological analysis of marriage markets and processes of mate choice. His methodological interests relate to methods of online-research, methods of quantative and longitudinal empirical research as well as the analysis of life course data. Additionally he is interested in the development of IT-based approaches for social science research like database and XML driven methods of data management.
Since 2010, he is working as the operational manager of the NEPS Data Center at the National Educational Panel Study.