We would like to thank all researchers who submitted Open Modules for ASEP wave 2 (2026).
The next call for Open Modules will be for ASEP wave 3 (2027) and will start in spring 2026.
The Austrian Socio-Economic Panel (ASEP) is a long-term research project offering researchers in Austria and beyond a unique analytical potential for longitudinal analyses. ASEP consists of two different sub-projects: ASEP Survey and Administrative Data Collection for the Social Sciences (ADCOL).
The ASEP Survey is designed as a long-term household panel survey collecting data on the same people every year to enable scientific research on the influence of changing social conditions as well as intra-individual changes on people living in Austria. To ensure that analyses can also be carried out in a household context, all individuals from randomly selected households are interviewed. The ASEP Survey is based on international reference surveys such as the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP), the Swiss Household Panel (SHP) or the British UK Household Longitudinal Study and so far unique in Austria.
For the ADCOL, we are preparing to provide administrative data from Statistics Austria for scientific research. This provides completely new research potentials to the scientific community by enabling analyses of data from the entire Austrian resident population for the characteristics provided. These data are also available longitudinally, making it possible to carry out panel analyses. The data from the ADCOL can further be linked with data from the ASEP Survey, other surveys of Statistics Austria, and even external data - in compliance with strict data protection guidelines.
We would like to thank all researchers who submitted Open Modules for ASEP wave 2 (2026).
The next call for Open Modules will be for ASEP wave 3 (2027) and will start in spring 2026.
The conception of the ASEP as a socio-economic household panel results in seven subject areas which form the content-related basis of the ASEP Survey and the ADCOL register characteristics:
ASEP Survey
Questionnaire ASEP Survey Pilot Wave 1 (2023)
Codebook and User Guide ASEP Survey Pilot Wave 1 (2023) via AUSSDA
Questionnaire ASEP Survey Pilot Wave 2 (2024)
Administrative Data Collection for the Social Sciences (ADCOL)
List of administrative variables available in ADCOL (2015 - 2022)
The data from the ASEP Survey Pilot Wave 1 (2023) is available as an anonymized Scientific Use File (SUF) for free direct download from the Austrian Social Science Data Archive (AUSSDA) at https://data.aussda.at/dataverse/asep. Data on around 1,300 households and 2,600 individuals are available for content analysis. In addition, the data is available in pseudonymized form as a full edition (i.e. without the coarsening required for the Scientific Use File for data protection reasons) in the Austrian Micro Data Center (AMDC) microdata catalog for researchers at accredited research institutions for a fee.
The data from Pilot Wave 2 (2024) will be made available in the course of beginning of 2026.
The data from the main ASEP Survey Wave 1 (2025) is likely to be available at the end of 2026.
The Administrative Data Collection for the Social Sciences (ADCOL) is also available in the AMDC microdata catalog as a full edition for a fee and can be linked there with the survey data of the ASEP Survey. The ADCOL is already available for the years 2015 to 2022 and is published annually at the same time as the data release of the ASEP Survey for the respective following year.
Funding is provided by the Federal Ministry Women, Science and Research (BMFWF), which commissioned Statistics Austria to carry out the project. Statistics Austria is responsible for project management, survey design, survey implementation, data preparation, and quality assurance. A scientific advisory board comprising international experts advises the employees of Statistics Austria and represents the interests of the scientific community with its input. The content of the questionnaire and the selection of the register data to be made available come from seven thematic working groups made up of various representatives from the relevant scientific disciplines. The mediation between the scientific advisory board, the thematic working groups, and Statistics Austria is organized by a scientific coordination, which is currently located at the Institute for Advanced Studies (IHS).