Education, Competence Development and Career Trajectories: Analyzing Data of the National Educational Panel Study Neps

This Open Access book presents the results of an interdisciplinary research program to utilize data from the multicohort German National Educational Panel Study (NEPS), which included over 100.000 participants in six nationally representative panel studies. Renowned researchers from the fields of sociology, psychology, educational science, economics, and survey methodology have used the (longitudinal) data for their substantive and/or methodological questions and present important results of their research projects. This edited volume contains contributions from the following four topics: (1) Competence Development: Individual Characteristics, Learning Environments, and other Contextual Factors, (2) Educational Transitions and Pathways: Influencing Factors and Outcomes, (3) Vocational Training and Labour Market, and (4) Individuals with Migration Background. It provides essential insights for researchers, postdocs, PhD students, and university students of different scientific disciplines interested in educational sciences as well as for policy makers who have to deal with educational problems in modern societies.

Sabine Weinert is head of the Department of Developmental Psychology, University of Bamberg. Her research focuses on the development of competencies, their impact and influencing factors. She acted as scientific head of the German National Educational Panel Study (NEPS; a large-scale multicohort study) and coordinates the interdisciplinary DFG Priority Programme ‘Education as a Lifelong Process‘.

Gwendolin J. Blossfeld is a coordinator of the DFG Priority Programme 1646 ‘Education as a Lifelong Process’ and a postdoctoral fellow of the Twinning Project ‘YouthLife’ which are both located at the University of Bamberg. She has organized substantive and methodological workshops for the DFG Priority Programme 1646. Her substantive research interests are in the fields of educational sociology, methods of longitudinal data analysis, social inequality, and demography.

Hans-Peter Blossfeld is Emeritus of Excellence at the University of Bamberg and coordinates (together with S. Weinert) the interdisciplinary DFG Priority Programme ‘Education as a Lifelong Process.‘ He is the founder of the NEPS and held a Chair of Sociology at the University of Bamberg. He is an internationally renowned expert on life-course research, statistical methods for longitudinal data analysis, modern methods of quantitative social research, cross-national research, social inequality, youth, family, educational sociology, labor market research, demography, and social stratification and mobility.