FReDA Autumn School 2025

Would you like to familiarise yourself with working with FReDA's data sets and perhaps use them for your own research? Then the ‘FReDA Autumn School’ is a great opportunity to take a closer look at our panel and scrutinise the potential of FReDA for yourself.

The ‘FReDA Autumn School’ is a three-day workshop organised by FReDA in cooperation with the research focus ‘Interdisciplinary Public Policy’ (IPP) from 10 to 12 September 2025 at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz. It is aimed at researchers who work with FReDA data and would like an introduction to its analysis possibilities. You can now register for the workshop - the registration deadline is 15 July 2025.

You can register for the Autumn School 2025 here.

At the event, researchers from the FReDA project team will give you a practical introduction to working with the panel data, explain the FReDA questionnaires and discuss methodological issues. In hands-on sessions, participants will then have the opportunity to work with the data themselves and pursue their own research questions with the data set of more than 30,000 interviews. The FReDA team will be happy to support you and answer all your questions throughout the workshop.

The workshop will be held in English and is aimed at advanced Bachelor's and Master's students, PhD students and postdocs with knowledge of Stata, R or SPSS - preferably Stata, as Stata will be used for the examples.

A flyer with the preliminary programme of the Autumn School 2025 can be found here.

The preliminary programme of this year's Autumn School includes the following agenda:

Wednesday, September 10
13:00-13:45 Registration & welcoming of participants
13:45-15:15 Introduction to FReDA, data-access and documentation
15:30-17:00 Hands-on session I
17:00-17:30 Potential research topics
17:30-19:00 Evening reception (with drinks and finger food, sponsored by FReDA)

Thursday, September 11
9:45-10:45 Practical use of FReDA data
10:45-11:45 Hands-on session II
11:45-12:30 GGS and its relationship to FReDA
13:30-14:15 The strength of panel data
14:15-15:15 Hands-on session III
15:30-16:15 pairfam and its relationship to FReDA
16:15-17:30 Hands-on session IV
18:30 Dinner at local restaurant

Friday, September 12
9:45-10:30 Dyadic analyses, using data from partner interviews
10:30-11:45 Hands-on session V
11:45-12:00 Evaluation
12:00-12:15 Autumn School closing

FReDA is available to researchers free of charge

FReDA is an interdisciplinary long-term study on families and partnerships in Germany that surveys people between the ages of 18 and 49 twice a year. The data from the sample is available to the scientific community free of charge for scientific and non-commercial purposes. Further information can be found on the FReDA website.

If you have any questions, please contact the relevant contact address at the Institute of Sociology at Mainz University or at freda@bib.bund.de.