Some of the many topics surveyed include household composition, occupation, employment, earnings, health and life satisfaction.
The annual surveys are conducted by the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW Berlin) and the Kantar Group.
[1] Data are available to social science researchers in Germany and abroad in SPSS/PSPP, SAS/DAP, Stata, R/S-PLUS and ASCII format.
SOEP data are integrated into the Cross National Equivalent File (CNEF) which contains panel data from Australia, Canada, Germany, Great Britain and the United States.
The data distribution of the SOEP for researchers outside Germany is supplied with the CNEF by a group at Ohio State University.