The aim of this substudy run by the National Educational Panel Study (NEPS) is to generate a longitudinal cohort starting with infants in their first year of life. The families are visited in their homes. Substantial, theory-driven surveys are conducted with the children (as target persons) and their parents as well as with care takers outside of the home (group managers of a day care center or of the Kindergarten, childminders). This data enables scientists to describe and analyze processes and courses of education as well as competence development.

The main research questions of this substudy of the NEPS include:

• How do children under 4 years of age develop early skills and abilities and in what ways are processes of development and education supported by the settings of child care and education within and outside the family?

• How do family-internal and family-external settings interact?

• From what age of the child do families make use of child care settings and education outside the family and to what extent does this depend on the development of the child and/or on the family background including family-internal learning environments, parental needs, and orientations?

 

In addition, there is a special focus on families with migration backgrounds. So far only a vague understanding has been acquired in Germany concerning studies of education processes in this age group in the context of support within and outside the families as well as early educational choices. This necessitates extensive preparatory work on developing survey instruments and sample selection strategies that ensure connectivity to the sample of the second Kindergarten cohort. For these reasons, data collection started in 2012.