The data collected by the German Family Panel pairfam are accessible to the scientific community as scientific use file for scholarly analyses. The current release 13.0 includes the following files:

• the well-prepared and anonymized pairfam data of all 13 survey waves (incl. the DemoDiff, sample refreshment and step-up subsamples) in the standard data formats Stata and SPSS (with both English and German labels),

• all codebooks (in English and German language) and questionnaires as well as a set of overviews of the instruments, the concept paper, the data and the scales manual, the annual method reports, and several other documents.

The release of the additional pairfam COVID-19 survey, release 1.1 includes:

• the well-prepared and anonymized pairfam data of the additional online survey in the standard data formats Stata and SPSS (with both English and German labels),

• the codebook (in English and German language), an overview of all instruments in the data set, syntax files to generate scales, the pairfam Technical Paper 15, and the method report.

If you are an employee of a university or research institution and would like to request the data for your own research purposes, please proceed as follows:

• Download the application form and indicate which data you would like to order.
• Enter the requested information on the contract form, sign it, and send it to the pairfam user support office.

After the application is approved by pairfam, the scientific use file(s) will be provided by GESIS at a small charge either as download or on CD-ROM (30 € per study, 3€ for every additional study). All relevant information will be given to the applicant via email. For users who already received the previous release 12.0 of the German Family Panel from GESIS, the download of release 13.0 will be free of charge if the new application form is registered by September 30, 2022 at the latest.

Please note that B.A./M.A. students may not order the scientific use file using the application form as a main user. They can access the data through internal distribution (see below) for the preparation of a student thesis via their advisor. For this purpose, the distribution form has to be filled out, signed and sent to pairfam user service.

At the latest four weeks after submission of the thesis, students are obliged to inform the pairfam user service about title, date and institution by E-mail.

The internal distribution of pairfam data to a third party is authorized only if the other person:

• works in the context of the research project or the same research institute specified in application form or
• is a student using the data for theses required by the degree program.

There is the obligation to complete the distribution form and to inform the pairfam user support about any internal distribution of the data by sending a copy of this document.

The application form must be completed and sent to our user support for each new release. The distribution contract, however, is valid independently of the specific release version. If you have previously signed a distribution contract with third persons, you are permitted to provide data from the next release to these specific persons without completing a new distribution form.

The pairfam data can be used for teaching purposes - for example for sample calculations of students. If students need to get access to the data, reduced datasets of the regular pairfam penal data have to be used to protect privacy. All users of the teaching version must now sign a form and send it to the pairfam user service.

In the scientific use file we provide the syntax required to produce this reduced version from the original data by generating new datasets that contain only 50% of the cases.

The full version of pairfam COVID-19 data may be used for  teaching purposes as well as B.A./M.A. theses. Due to data privacy issues, however, students may then not receive the regular pairfam data as well. In addition, every student has to sign the internal distribution form which needs to be sent tot the pairfam user support. If the COVID-19 data need to be combined with the regular pairfam data for teaching purposes, a 50% teaching version of both data sets has to be used. For further information on this topic, please contact the pairfam user support.

The FDZ pairfam has been accredited by the RatSWD.

Information Complaints Office of the RatSWD:

Since July 2016, the RatSWD has established a complaints office. Via a contact form on the homepage of the RatSWD, you have the possibility to address unresolved problems with the use of the data of the FDZ, which you could not settle in an exchange with the responsible contact person at the FDZ, to the RatSWD.

The contact form as well as details about the responsibility and the procedure can be found on the website of the RatSWD: www.ratswd.de/beschwerdestelle.