The Leibniz Institute for Educational Trajectories (LIfBi) in Bamberg analyses educational processes from birth to old age. In order to promote longitudinal educational research in Germany, the LIfBi provides fundamental, nationally and internationally significant, research-based infrastructures for empirical educational research. One core of the institute is the National Educational Panel Study (NEPS), which is based at the LIfBi and brings together the expertise of a Germany-wide, interdisciplinary network of excellence. In addition to the ReGES and BildungswegeFlucht refugee studies, the LIfBi is also in charge of other major projects such as the Data Literacy monitoring study. This is based on their own research and development work, in particular the well-founded development of instruments and methods for longitudinal educational studies, from which other research projects also benefit.
Important work and services:
- LIfBi runs the National Educational Panel Study (NEPS). The NEPS collects longitudinal data that are representative of Germany on the development of competencies, educational processes, educational decisions, and returns to education in formal, nonformal, and informal contexts throughout the whole life span.
- NEPS data are made available to the national and international scientific community in the form of Scientific Use Files that can be accessed through various innovative ways using state-of-the-art technology. Interested data users are invited to attend regular user trainings.
- NEPS data provide an empirical basis for research and offer a rich potential for analysis with regard to educational research and related disciplines (e.g., demography, educational science, economics, psychology, and sociology).
- In addition to the standard documentation material for every single Scientific Use File, the NEPS Research Data Center offers a number of supplemental information and assisting tools for handling the NEPS data.
- The Research Data Center LIfBi (RDC LIfBi) is primarily responsible for the user-friendly preparation of survey and test data of the National Educational Panel Study (NEPS) and its dissemination to the scientific community in the form of Scientific Use Files.
- Third-party funded projects by LIfBi: LIfBi continually acquires new third-party funded projects.
