Sample Characteristics

Cohort Succession

In order to successfully document and analyze historical changes in how people pass through transitions (e.g., transitions from school to vocational training as a function of available apprenticeships or of the effects of educational reforms), new starting samples will be recruited in later years (cohort succession).
 

Institution-Based Versus Individual Samples

To assess the structural and compositional features of institutional learning environments, cluster samples will be recruited in the domains of Kindergarten, school, and (applied or theoretically oriented) higher education institutions. This means, for example, that, when possible, all children in a Kindergarten group or all students in a school class will be recruited as participants in the NEPS. In subsequent years, all these participants will be followed up - even when they are no longer members of the same group or class, or when they are no longer studying the same subject at the same university. This will extend documentation to cover the educational pathways of children who have to repeat a school year or who change the type of school they attend, university students who change subject, and those individuals who drop out of school or studies, thus making it possible to analyze, for example, the educational careers of risk students. For neonates and for adults in the domains of vocational training and further training, institution-based samples are either impossible or too difficult to recruit. Here, preference will be given to individual samples, or, alternatively, all students in the cluster samples will be followed up individually after their transition from the general education system to occupational training.

Special Schools for Students With Learning Disabilities

As in PISA, the NEPS will also cover special schools for students with learning disabilities. Such students can participate as long as they are able to complete the competence tests that are so central to the NEPS. To make this possible, competence tests will be shortened and revised so that their level of difficulty corresponds to the ability level of special school students.
 

Oversampling

To also permit specific analyses of people with a migration background, these groups will be oversampled. For at least two groups, namely, people whose families came originally from Turkey and from families of German descent who have recently come to Germany from the former Soviet Union (Spätaussiedler), a sufficient number of cases will be recruited to permit group-specific analyses. Special schools will also be oversampled.