Working and Learning in a Changing World (ALWA)
ALWA Survey Data
ALWA-LiNu - ALWA Literacy und Numeracy Data
ALWA-ADIAB – ALWA survey data linked to administrative data of the IAB
ALWA Survey Data
Data Source:
‘Working and Learning in a Changing World’, ALWA derived from its German name ‘Arbeiten und Lernen im Wandel’ for short, is a data set which was collected on behalf of the research department ‘Education and Employment over the Life Course’ (FB E1) of the Institute for Employment Research (IAB) in Nuremberg within the project ‘Qualifications, Competencies and Working Lives’. The ALWA-data contain information about more than 10.400 life histories and allows detailed longitudinal analysis in particular about schooling and training decisions, labour market re-entries and labour market behaviour as well as about processes of family formation and regional mobility.
The basic population consists of all German residents born between 1956 and 1988 irrespective of their spoken language, nationality and employment status. The random sample was drawn in two steps. First 281 sample points (250 communities) were taken from data provided by the Federal Statistical Office or its state agencies. Their local residents' registration offices were asked to provide a systematic random sample (interval sampling) from their person registers and to provide a list of addresses from the birth cohorts 1956-1988. Second, for the field work, 152 addresses per sample point were selected by a simple random sample, making a total of 42.712 addresses. For 22.656 addresses a valid telephone phone number could be researched.
After a pilot study and pre-test interviews the main survey started in August 2007. The telephone interviews were realised from August 2007 to April 2008. In total, 10.404 interviews were conducted.
Contents:
The information about the life histories of the respondents was collected in different modules, meaning that questions about different life domains were asked successively. The following modules were asked for: personal information, places of residence, school visits, vocational preparation, training and higher education, military service, employment and unemployment, partnerships, children and parental leave.
Detailed Descriptions of the modules can be found in the FDZ Methodenreport ‘Arbeiten und Lernen im Wandel. Teil I: Überblick’ and in the FDZ Datenreport ‚Arbeiten und Lernen im Wandel. Teil II: Codebuch’. Both reports can be found under working tools.
Please find more detailed information on the dataset in the outline.
ALWA has been prepared for external researchers as a scientific use file, which can be obtained via the FDZ. Further information about this is available under the heading data access.
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ALWA-LiNu - ALWA Literacy und Numeracy Data
Shortly after the CATI interviews, one-hour face-to-face PAPI interviews were conducted in the IAB study ALWA with those respondents who had given their consent. Mainly, these interviews consisted in standardized tests focused on measuring cognitive skills in two domains, prose literacy and numeracy. The major goal of the ALWA study, for which the pilot was conducted in 2006/07 and the main survey in 2007/08, was to provide a database for statistical analyses on the relationships among cognitive competencies, educational credentials, and employment and working lives in longitudinal perspective. In the skills tests measurement constructs and items from both the International Adult Literacy Survey (IALS, 1994-1999) and the Adult Literacy and Life Skills survey (ALL, 2003-2008) were used. Scaling methods were modeled as well after those used for IALS and ALL.
The dataset ALWA-LiNu contains four blocks of information: technical information on booklets and test completion, weights, proficiency estimators and original test items.
Please find more detailed information on the dataset in the outline.
ALWA_LiNu has been prepared for external researchers as scientific use file that can be linked to the ALWA survey data as well as the ALWA-ADIAB datasets. Further information about this is available under the heading data access.
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ALWA-ADIAB – ALWA survey data linked to administrative data of the IAB
ALWA is additionally available as a version in which the survey data are linked with administrative data: ALWA-ADIAB. This dataset makes it possible to analyze survey and administrative data for the ALWA respondents simultaneously. The linked administrative data set contains both variables with individual characteristics and characteristics of the establishments the respondents work at. The administrative data cover the entire time frame of data available at the FDZ. Thus, episodes which started or ended after the actual interview are included as well.
In addition to that, ALWA-ADIAB contains characteristics about the quality of the data linkage for each respondent, which permits methodological analyses.
An overview of the ALWA-ADIAB dataset can be found in the outline. For more detailed information please see the FDZ Data Report 05/2011 under working tools. Detailed information on the linkage procedure and on the selectivity processes in ALWA-ADIAB will soon be published in the FDZ Methodenreport series, which will also be available under working tools.
ALWA-ADIAB access is possible via on-site use and subsequently also via remote data access.
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