Starting in 2000, Schmollers Jahrbuch / Journal of Applied Social Science Studies has a special section entitled European Data Watch. This section offers descriptions as well as discussions of data sources that may be of interest to social scientists engaged in empirical research or teaching courses that include empirical investigations performed by students.
Most of the data sets described are micro data at the level of individuals, households or firms (including linked employer- employee data sets), and some of them cover units from more than one country. The purpose of the contributions to the Data Watch section is to describe the information in the data source, to give examples of questions tackled with data, and to inform how to access these data for research and teaching.
The contributions are written by experts who often were in charge of collecting or constructing the data sets. Furthermore, the emerging new research data centers and data service centers that host rich data sets are portrayed.
Suggestions for data sources to be described in future columns and comments should be mailed to Joachim Wagner.
