The concept of individual retracking in NEPS—approach, practice, and first empirical evidence from starting cohorts 3 and 4

Abstract

For panel studies like the National Educational Panel Study (NEPS), it is of vital importance to keep the respondents on board and gather information over the life course in a consistent way. In the school cohorts of the NEPS, tests and questionnaires are administered in groups at school. As long as the respondents visit the schools where the NEPS is conducted, it is comparatively easy to reach these respondents and to keep them in the panel. However, if a respondent leaves an NEPS school due to changing schools, or if a school cancels its participation in the study, a different approach must be found to maintain contact with this special group of respondents and to continue collecting data from this group in a way that is comparable with the main field survey. For this reason, a concept of surveying these respondents in an individualized way was developed by the NEPS. In this article, we introduce the concept of individual retracking applied in and planned for the school cohorts of the NEPS, and we provide insight into the practice and challenges of this kind of data collection. We begin by introducing individual retracking as part of the aims and scope of the NEPS to survey not only mainstream but also nonstandard careers and individual pathways over the life course. Based on a review of the research literature on the designs and applications of individual retracking in longitudinal studies on educational processes, we introduce the approach taken by the NEPS in terms of its theoretical concept and its survey practice and present first empirical evidence on the basic sample structure and the response rates in the individually retracked survey as compared with the main field survey. We conclude the article with an outlook on the next steps to also introduce individual retracking in the NEPS in the contexts of elementary education and higher secondary education.