Abstract

With the Austrian Socio-Economic Panel (ASEP), Statistics Austria established a longitudinal household panel which allows researchers to analyze the long-term developments in society as well as effects of policy measures. This is achieved by setting ASEP up as a multi-topic/multi-level, large scale/high-quality, multi-data source and academia-collaborated survey.
To deliver data for all disciplines of the social sciences, ASEP covers multiple topics ranging from income, housing, health, education, family and labor. Others include attitudes, values and behavior on personal and societal aspects. Data on these topics is collected on the individual level of each household member and on the level of the household itself. About half of the survey questions are repeated every year, leaving important space for alternating and open near-term question modules.
To meet researchers’ needs, ASEP aims to ensure a sufficient net sample size in longitudinal perspective. Much emphasis in the survey design of ASEP is therefore given to low attrition and low response-bias rates in each data collection wave. In the context of ASEP, a new method for achieving high quality in survey panels, the tailored-mode-design method, has been developed. This methodological approach might also be promising for other surveys in official statistics.
Another innovative approach in ASEP is to make use of multiple data sources. Besides the ASEP Survey, another data product, purely based on administrative data, is being developed: A collection of the most fruitful administrative data for social sciences out of the data stock already available at Statistics Austria. At the newly founded Austrian Microdata Center (AMDC), researchers will be able to link this Social Science Administrative Data Collection not only to ASEP Survey data, but to all other data products of Statistics Austria. This linkage allows for the analysis of time-series in the register variables up from the first survey waves.
The ASEP project is founded in close collaboration with the scientific community, which is a precondition for the sustainable success of this undertaking. Firstly, ASEP is accompanied by a scientific advisory board comprised of five national and two international experts that formally meet twice a year. Secondly, Statistics Austria has contracted the practical aspects of scientific coordination to a national research institute, and works together with two of their researchers on a daily basis. Thirdly, seven working groups - one for each of the above mentioned ASEP topics – have been set up to regularly discuss the specific contents of ASEP. Altogether, these working groups consist of over 40 national researchers from different fields. From these three institutionalized cooperation strands, many opportunities for further and deeper cooperation between Statistics Austria and academia arise. These include for example: joint publications, joint sessions at conferences, and joint research projects on new approaches of data collection, production and dissemination. The future task at hand will be on how to harvest these possibilities within the institutional context of an official statistical office.