The COORDINATE project (COhort cOmmunity Research and Development Infrastructure Network for Access Throughout Europe), funded by the European Union within the framework of "Horizon 2020", held its summer schools this year in Bamberg. The focus was on the National Education Panel Study.

International and interdisciplinary
With the support of COORDINATE, a total of twenty "scholarships" for participants from European countries were awarded in a selection process. The successful applicants came from research institutions in Portugal, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Austria, Croatia, Serbia, Ireland, Poland and Estonia. Other participants from Germany, the USA and England joined the Summer School at their own expense. The main disciplines represented were psychology, sociology, economics and health-related subjects; the spectrum of participants ranged from master's students and doctoral students to post-docs and a professor. They all worked together under the guidance of colleagues from LIfBi on the basics of working with NEPS data as well as in two groups on specific skills in the application of (a) methods for group comparisons with competency data taking into account covariates and (b) methods for the analysis of episodic and life course data, respectively.

LINK to Summer School

How to do sequence data analysis
An interesting contribution to the Summer School was the LIfBi Lecture by Prof. Dr. Matthias Studer (University of Geneva), who presented the methodology of sequence data analysis in more detail. It has been increasingly used since the 1990s to study trajectory data and is considered a key method for life course research. Studer used examples from studies on the transition from school to working life in Switzerland to present the structure and possible applications of sequence data analysis. He explained visualization possibilities, cluster analysis and regression as central elements, but also addressed the limitations of the methodology and more recent developments.

LINK to the LIfBi Lecture with slides

Research projects set in motion
Despite midsummer temperatures and the fact that most participants only became aware of the National Education Panel Study and NEPS data with the Summer School, the week-long event produced a number of future research projects based on NEPS data.Dr. Daniel Fuß, head of the FDZ-LIfBi and responsible for the implementation, found the very good cooperation and the quick establishment of new contacts at least as remarkable as the content-related work: "From the first day on, the Summer School functioned as a community of people who were highly interested in analyses with the NEPS data as well as in the exchange among each other.I am sure that the cordial atmosphere and the enormous commitment of all participants left a lasting and extremely positive impression on LIfBi."As special highlights outside of the scientific exchange, the guests were able to learn a lot of interesting facts about Bamberg during a guided tour of the city and experience a part of the local culture first-hand during a joint visit to the "Spezial Keller".  

Promoting access to longitudinal data

The COORDINATE project aims to promote access to longitudinal research data that allow analysis of child well-being in particular, and at the same time to initiate a network of researchers on this topic. The measures include, among others, the implementation of three Summer Schools on suitable data sets.  
After the first Summer School dealt with the British household panel "Understanding Society" (Essex), the second Summer School was dedicated to the "National Education Panel Study".

LINK to COORDINATE [external]