Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC), Germany - Prime Age (2012)

In the project "Studie zum Zusammenhang von Kompetenzen und Arbeitsmarktchancen von gering Qualifizierten in Deutschland" (Study on the Relationship between Skills and Labour Market Opportunities of People with Low Qualifications in Germany, funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research, funding number PLI3061), the skills and labour market opportunities of people aged 26 to 55 in Germany were examined in more detail. This is an age group that is in the active employment phase and has generally completed its training phase. In order to be able to make reliable statements about this group, an increase sample of people aged 26 to 55 living in eastern Germany was drawn at the same time as the PIAAC sample was drawn. The 560 additional cases surveyed are not part of the main sample in the PIAAC Public and Scientific Use Files (ZA 5845), but were later combined with the net cases of the PIAAC main sample (aged 26 to 55) in the present dataset.

The present data set thus includes the supplementary sample for East Germany and the 26 to 55-year-old respondents from the main sample (study number ZA 5845). For these persons, competence values (plausible values) are available in the following areas as well as background information
- reading literacy
- expertise in everyday mathematics
- technology-based problem solving.

Respondents aged 26 to 55 from the main PIAAC sample may have slightly different values in some variables in this data set. These include competence, income and weighting variables. The reason for this is that the imputation and scaling procedures for these variables were performed separately for both datasets to ensure maximum internal consistency of each dataset.

The background questionnaire for PIAAC is divided into the following topics:

A: General information such as age and gender

B: Education as the highest educational attainment, current education, participation in further education

C: Employment status and background such as paid work and unpaid work for a family business, job search information

D: Information on current employment such as occupation, self-employment and income

E: Information on last gainful employment such as occupation, self-employment, reason for leaving the company

Q: Skills used at work such as influence and physical skills

G: Reading, writing, etc. during work

H: Reading, writing etc. in everyday life

I: Attitude and self-assessment to e.g. learning and voluntary work

J: background information such as country of birth, nationality, language, professions of parents

In addition, the data set contains further derived background variables, information on competence measurement, information on sampling and weighting, limited regional data, and time data for the interview.

For data protection reasons, the information on the municipal size class is only available to a limited extent. Furthermore, the data on the country of origin, nationality and the country where the highest school leaving certificate was obtained have been coarsened. These data were categorised on the basis of the microcensus.