Sampling and Weighting Cohort Samples in Institutional Contexts

The National Educational Panel Study surveys, among others, cohort samples of Kindergarten children, students in Grade 5 and students in Grade 9. This paper gives details on the applied sampling designs to realize these samples. The implemented designs cover indirect sampling procedures, stratification, and two-stage cluster sampling designs. Details on the derivation of design weights and their successive adjustments yielding nonresponse adjusted weights are presented. The considered adjustments refer to institutional and individual nonresponse and take into account clustering on institutional level by specifying random effects within the corresponding regression models. For Kindergarten children, the empirical results show that a child’s living conditions (with both or only one parent present) influence the participation propensity. For students in secondary schools, a language other than German spoken at home as well as competencies in math and German influence the decision to participate in the panel study. A discussion of strategies to provide cross-sectional and longitudinal weights is provided.