Collection Policy

The Research Data Centre (FDZ) at the Institute for Educational Quality Improvement (IQB) archives and documents data sets and accompanying materials from quantitatively oriented empirical educational research and provides these for re- and secondary analyses. This interdisciplinary field includes studies from educational science, pedagogical psychology, sociology of education, economics of education, and didactics.

Main task 🔗

The main task of the FDZ at IQB is to secure and make available data sets of the German samples from the large national and international school performance studies on transnational educational monitoring (National Assessment Studies and IQB Trends in Student Achievement, PISA, TIMSS, IGLU). These studies form the core of data collection at FDZ at IQB.

In addition, the FDZ at the IQB has specialized in data sets and accompanying materials from national studies with competence measurements in the field of education. The focus is on studies measuring students' competencies at general secondary schools, special educational needs schools, and vocational/professional schools. In addition, studies with random samples of students or studies on early childhood education in the relevant institutions are also of interest. The competences measured can be subject-specific or interdisciplinary. Data sets from studies without competence tests are not archived.

The FDZ at IQB actively curates the archived data sets according to formal and content-related criteria and constantly improves data quality. The provision of data sets with insufficient data quality is rejected.

Long-term availability 🔗

As part of its long-term archiving activities, the FDZ at the IQB takes measures to ensure the curation and preservation of research data and associated metadata throughout their entire life cycle. Research data is securely archived and remains accessible over the long term. Long-term archiving ensures that secondary analyses by researchers remain reproducible for up to 10 years after their data usage contracts have expired.

Cooperations 🔗

The FDZ at the IQB is a partner in the German Network of Educational Research Data (VerbundFDB). In the VerbundFDB, research data centres from educational research work together to improve access to research data for educational research.

The work of the FDZ is based on the recommendations of the German Data Forum (RatSWD) .

Essential documents 🔗

The basis of the work and procedure of the Research Data Centre at IQB is a set of rules for transferring and disseminating data to the FDZ at the IQB.