The Austrian Socio-Economic Panel (ASEP) is a long-term research project offering researchers in Austria and beyond a unique analytical potential for longitudinal analyses. ASEP consists of two different sub-projects: ASEP Survey and ASEP Register.
The ASEP Survey is designed as a long-term household panel survey collecting data on the same people every year to enable scientific research on the influence of changing social conditions as well as intra-individual changes on people living in Austria. To ensure that analyses can also be carried out in a household context, all individuals from randomly selected households are interviewed. The ASEP Survey is based on international reference surveys such as the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP), the Swiss Household Panel (SHP) or the British UK Household Longitudinal Study and so far unique in Austria.
For the ASEP Register, we are preparing to provide administrative data from Statistics Austria for scientific research. This provides completely new research potentials to the scientific community by enabling analyses of data from the entire Austrian resident population for the characteristics provided. These data are also available longitudinally, making it possible to carry out panel analyses. The data from the ASEP Register can further be linked with data from the ASEP Survey, other surveys of Statistics Austria, and even external data - in compliance with strict data protection guidelines.
The main topics covered by ASEP are, in particular, housing, income, work, family, health, education, and demographics. In the ASEP Survey, we also collect data on the respondents' attitudes and values. Further information can be found here at a later point in time, namely the ASEP Survey questionnaire on the one hand and the list of variables from the ASEP Register on the other.
The first ASEP data will be available for scientific research from around fall 2024. The first data from the ASEP Survey will stem from its first wave in fall and winter 2023/2024, while the data from the ASEP Register will be available retroactively to 2015 from this point onwards. This enables users of the ASEP Register to conduct longitudinal analyses right from the start.
The ASEP Survey data will be available free of charge as a scientific use file via the Austrian Social Science Data Archive (AUSSDA). The data of the ASEP Register will be made available to authorized users for a processing fee via remote access via the Austrian Micro Data Center (AMDC).
Funding is provided by the Federal Ministry of Education, Science and Research (BMBWF), which commissioned Statistics Austria to carry out the project. Statistics Austria is responsible for project management, survey design, survey implementation, data preparation, and quality assurance. A scientific advisory board comprising international experts advises the employees of Statistics Austria and represents the interests of the scientific community with its input. The content of the questionnaire and the selection of the register data to be made available come from seven thematic working groups made up of various representatives from the relevant scientific disciplines. The mediation between the scientific advisory board, the thematic working groups, and Statistics Austria is organized by a scientific coordination, which is currently located at the Institute for Advanced Studies (IHS).