Research Data Center of the German Family Panel (FDZ pairfam)

Funded as a long-term project by the German Research Foundation (DFG), it was launched in 2008 with a baseline sample of 12,402 randomly selected respondents in three cohorts born between 1971-1973, 1981-1983, and 1991-1993. The panel also includes a sample of 1,489 respondents from the cohorts 1971-73 and 1981-83 living in Eastern Germany who were first surveyed in 2009 in the complementary study DemoDiff. An additional refreshment sample with 5,021 respondents from the cohorts 1981-83 and 1991-93 as well as a new cohort 2001-03 was added in the 11^th wave in 2018. “Anchor” respondents are surveyed annually in face-to-face interviews. The parallel inclusion of partners, parents (wave 2-8), and children of anchor persons (where applicable) allows researchers to study attitudes and mutual interdependencies of family members as they develop over time and in different phases of life. The survey data are available as a scientific use file

According to the criteria of the German Data Forum, the Research Data Center pairfam facilitates access to the fully processed and documented data of the German Family Panel for scientific research purposes. It also provides extensive support to data user with regularly conducted data workshops and user conferences, an up-to-date website and a hotline for individual user support.

Access to the pairfam data requires signing a data use agreement, which authorises researchers to pass on the data to other researchers. Detailed information on data access as well as all relevant forms are available the project website. In addition, a secure on-site workstation in Cologne (Germany) may be used to work with pairfam dataset enriched with numerous regional indicators.

Data on persons and couples: anchor person and partner, parents, children, incl. complementary study DemoDiff, subsample step-up respondents, and refreshment sample (waves 1-13 available as part of Release 13.0 since June 2022)