Objectives
The 1954-56 and 1959-61 cohorts were chosen as target groups that benefited from the expansion of the German education system relative to older cohorts, but were then faced with a difficult labor market situation. We explored the consequences of these developments for career entry and positioning on the labor market.

Furthermore, given the increasing numbers of non-marital partnerships and children born out of wedlock, changes in patterns of family formation and in demographic behavior were expected. The analysis thus focused on aspects of partnership and parenthood in the former West Germany.

Questionnaire Design
The questionnaire administered in LV-West III was based on the LV-West II T survey instrument. In order to investigate career entry during the labor market crisis, additional questions were incorporated to cover the domains of vocational and professional training, labor market entry, and future aspirations.

In contrast to the previous surveys, in which data on the family of origin were collected at the very beginning of the interview, before the residential history was taken, family data were not collected until after occupational history data in this survey. Moreover, questions on siblings were not posed directly after those on parents, but after data on the respondents' spouses/partners and children had been collected. In retrospect, it is clear that this procedure caused some measure of confusion and misunderstanding among both interviewers and respondents, and that this new design seemed to function less well overall.

Codebook in English

Sample Design
As in the LV-West II project, addresses were selected by InfraScope. To identify target persons, all participants in the InfraScope sample were additionally asked to state their year of birth and nationality. This procedure generated 3,376 addresses and/or telephone numbers from persons belonging to the 1954-1956 and 1959-1961 cohorts.

The fundamental disadvantage of this procedure was that only households with telephones were covered. However, demographic data show that trainees, singles, unemployed and lower-income persons belonging to the 1956 cohort were much less likely to have a telephone, meaning that these subgroups were underrepresented from the outset. The advantage of this approach, on the other hand, was that the addresses were more up-to-date, which is clearly a positive development, especially where the mobile younger cohorts are concerned.

Data Collection
From October 1988 to early November 1989, a total of 2,008 men and women who were born in 1954-1956 or 1959-1961 and living in West Germany or West Berlin were surveyed using computer-assisted telephone interviews.

Table 1: Sample Coverage and Reasons for Non-Participation

	1954-56	1959-61	Total	Total (in %)
Gross number of addresses in InfraScope sample	1,667	1,709	3,376
Refusals in InfraScope sample	205	177	382
Not released to the field	136	181	317
Not processed b/c required number of cases already achieved	111	129	240
Gross sample	1,215	1,222	2,437	100.0
Neutral non-response	51	54	105	4.3
Adjusted sample	1,164	1,168	2,332	100.0
Target person not contactable during survey period	24	33	57	2.4
Target person refused	106	109	215	9.2
Other reasons for non-participation	1	0	1	0.0
Realized interviews	1,033	1,026	2,059	88.3
Unusable interviews	25	26	51	2.2
Usable interviews/coverage rate	1,008	1,000	2,008	86.1

Source: Kortmann (1995), p. 31, pdf-Format, 1000 KB

There were far fewer refusals than in the LV-West II T study (9.2% vs. 20.1%). However, experience gathered in the LV-West I study had already shown that younger target persons (i.e., the 1949-51 cohort) were much less likely to refuse than older cohorts.

Representativeness
During the time in the field, it emerged that men belonging to the 1955 cohort (born 1954-1956) were relatively difficult to contact; however, it was possible to compensate for this by processing the addresses released to the field more exhaustively. In contrast, so many women belonging to the 1960 cohort (born 1959-1961) agreed to participate in the survey that the target number of interviews was achieved before the survey period ended. Despite this, the correspondence between the targeted and the actual sample was very good (Kortmann, 1995, p. 37f., pdf format, 1000 KB). This reflects the advantages of improved monitoring of participant response and field control procedures permitted by computer-assisted telephone interviewing.

Data Editing
As in both of the previous studies (LV-West I and LV-West II), the data underwent thorough consistency and plausibility checks. A biographical framework was used to screen cases, and those that appeared to be problematic were given priority. In general, each case was checked thoroughly twice by two people and, if necessary, edited using the tape recordings and error protocol. In view of the large number of cases and the complexity of the survey instrument, it made sense to supplement this individual checking of protocols by computer-assisted checks. A computer program was thus developed to enable efficient, cross-domain checks of temporal consistency and completeness in both residential histories and educational and occupational trajectories (see Nuthmann & Brückner, 1995, pdf format, 267 KB).

Notes on Data Analysis
Data were originally held as SIR databases. To facilitate research using the data, they were released to the Central Archive for Empirical Social Research (ZA) in Cologne as public-use files in the form of SPSS data files, SPSS portable files, and STATA files. The datasets can be obtained from the Central Archive for Empirical Social Research (ZA Studies No. 2648).

For reasons of data protection, the public-use files were factually anonymized such that an unreasonable amount of time, expense, and labor would be required to identify individual statistical units. Any direct references to places and all open-ended responses were removed. The original "questionnaire number" was replaced by a new ID number produced by a random generator, such that no direct links can be made between the public-use files and the questionnaires themselves.

Documentation (Downloads, in German)

Hannah Brückner und Karl Ulrich Mayer: Lebensverläufe und gesellschaftlicher Wandel
Konzeption, Design und Methodik der Erhebung von Lebensverläufen der Geburtsjahrgänge 1954 - 1956 und 1959 - 1961. Materialien aus der Bildungsforschung Nr. 48. Max-Planck-Institut für Bildungsforschung Berlin 1995.

Teil I: Methodenbericht zur telefonischen Befragung LV III

Gesamtdokument	(pdf-Format, 2300 KB)
Inhaltsverzeichnis und Zusammenfassung	(pdf-Format, 714 KB)
Hannah Brückner: Werkstattbericht	(pdf-Format, 139 KB)
Klaus Kortmann: Materialien zum Methodenbericht - Infratest	(pdf-Format, 1000 KB)
Hannah Brückner und Karl Ulrich Mayer: Lebensverläufe und gesellschaftlicher Wandel Konzeption, Design und Methodik der Erhebung von Lebensverläufen der Geburtsjahrgänge 1954 - 1956 und 1959 - 1961. Materialien aus der Bildungsforschung Nr. 48. Max-Planck-Institut für Bildungsforschung Berlin 1995. Teil II: Materialien zur Durchführung der telefonischen Befragung LV III
Gesamtdokument	(pdf-Format, 688 KB)
Reinhard Nuthmann, Klaus Kortmann und Projektgruppe Lebensverläufe: Erhebungsinstrument für die telefonische Befragung - Kohorten 1954 - 56 und 1959 - 61	(pdf-Format, 268 KB)
Reinhard Nuthmann und Hannah Brückner: Editionshandbuch zur Lebensverlaufsstudie III - Kohorten 1954 - 56 und 1959 - 61	(pdf-Format, 267 KB)
Hannah Brückner: Anhang: Computerunterstützte Konsistenzprüfungen	(pdf-Format, 123 KB)
Hannah Brückner und Karl Ulrich Mayer: Lebensverläufe und gesellschaftlicher Wandel Konzeption, Design und Methodik der Erhebung von Lebensverläufen der Geburtsjahrgänge 1954 - 1956 und 1959 - 1961. Materialien aus der Bildungsforschung Nr. 48. Max-Planck-Institut für Bildungsforschung Berlin 1995. Teil III: Datenbankdokumentation zur Lebensverlaufsdatenbank LV III
Gesamtdokument	(pdf-Format, 622 KB)
Hannah Brückner und Alfons Geis: Codebuch	(pdf-Format, 264 KB)
Sigrid Wehner: SIR-Datenbankschema der Lebensverlaufsdatenbank LV3A	(pdf-Format, 361 KB)
Sigrid Wehner: SIR-Datenbankschema der Textdatenbank LV3Text	(pdf-Format, 175 KB)
Sigrid Wehner: SIR-Datenbankschema der Methodendatenbank KP3T	(pdf-Format, 163 KB)
Additional Material (in German)
Studie LV III - Filter der CATI-Erhebungsmasken	(pdf-Format, 166 KB)