German Ageing Survey

In the sixth wave of the DEAS in 2017, 6,626 panel participants were interviewed again. Of these, 712 respondents had first been interviewed in 1996, 704 respondents originate from the 2002 baseline sample, 2,109 from 2008 and 3,101 from 2014.

As in previous waves, respondents were asked in detail about their living situation. Information about the following subject areas was surveyed:

• employment and retirement
• partnership, family and intergenerational relationship
• social networks and support
• leisure activities and voluntary work
• housing situation and mobility
• economic situation and economic behaviour
• subjective well-being
• health and health behaviour
• need of assistance and need of care
• attitudes, norms and values.

Some questions could be omitted because they record permanent characteristics of the respondents, for example the highest degree of education or the childhood history. Additionally, a pulmonary function test to measure the lung capacity was conducted. Directly after the interview, the cognitive capacity of the participants was tested using a digit number test. Compared to previous waves, more questions regarding the living conditions were asked.

More information about data is available in the documentation and on the website of the DEAS project.

DEAS microdata is available free of charge to scientific researchers for non-profitable purposes. For reasons of data protection, signing a data distribution contract is required prior to obtaining the data.

The application form for usage of the DEAS data is here Application Form.
Data of the survey year 2017 is available in Stata- and SPSS-format with German and English labels. After signing the data distribution contract, the data can be downloaded directly from the internal download area free of charge.