The Institute for Employment Research (IAB) has been conducting the panel "Labour Market and Social Security" (PASS) for more than ten years. One of the central problems of long-term surveys, however, is the ability to instantaneously record events that occur between individual time points of the survey. In order to remedy this weakness, but also to obtain very specific data on smartphone use, the IAB has developed an Android application as part of a feasibility study for PASS.

Prof. Dr. Mark Trappmann gave an overview of this feasibility study in his presentation held as part of the LIfBilectures and particularly highlighted the challenges and data protection aspects. Trappmann is head of PASS at the IAB and holds the Chair of Sociology, especially Survey Methodology, at Bamberg University.