The First Six Waves of SOEP: The Panel Project in the Years 1983 to 1989

This article describes how the German Socio-Economic Panel longitudinal study project developed over the years 1983 to 1989, a period when practical experience was being gathered with the first six waves and when the further funding for this large-scale project was a constant issue. During this time, a series of basic features were established that have made this panel study an example to others - for example, its governance structure, teamworking capacity, service provision, data quality, and data provision. The article shows that during the early years of building this project in cooperation with the Collaborative Research Center Sfb 3 "Microanalytical Foundations of Social Policy" at the Universities of Frankfurt and Mannheim, the panel study at DIW Berlin developed increasingly close cooperation with non-university social science research institutions as well as with the two universities in West Berlin.