In order to understand individual educational trajectories and the related social inequality between different groups within society, it is necessary to collect key demographic and socio-economic background information. Thus, not only age or gender can influence educational trajectories, but also factors such as social origin or migration background can be causal for the emergence of social inequality in the life course. 
 
For this reason, the NEPS area "Basic Sociodemographic Information" bundles instruments for the collection of basic demographic and socio-economic information and ensures not only the standardization of the instruments used across the different respondent groups within NEPS, but also the national and international comparability of the indicators used. In addition, the collected characteristics are constantly reviewed with regard to societal and legal changes and supplemented if necessary.

An overview of the central contents can be found here.