Hans-Jürgen Andreß a is Full Professor in Empirical Social and Economic Research at the Faculty of Business Administration, Economics and Social Sciences at the University of Cologne. His research interests include statistics and multivariate methods; labor market research; social and family policy.

Katrin Golsch is a senior researcher at the Department of Sociology at Bielefeld University, Germany. Her core interests include statistical methods for the analysis of survey data and longitudinal data analysis in particular, life-course analysis, social structure, labor market research and comparative sociological research.

Alexander Schmidt is a PhD candidate at the Research Training Group SOCLIFE, funded by the Germany Science Foundation. He teaches computer assisted data analysis and survey research at the Chair of Empirical Social and Economic Research at the Faculty of Business Administration, Economics and Social Sciences at the University of Cologne. His research focuses on social mobility and comparative welfare state analysis.

Easy accessible: introduces into main methods of panel data analysis without expecting specialized mathematical and statistical knowledge

Replicates research from major social science journals to explain methods

For all students and researchers using household panel studies like GSOEP, BHPS, or PSID

Includes supplementary material: [...]

Introduction: Benefits and challenges of the panel design.- Outline of the book.- Audience and prerequisites.- Acknowledgements.- Managing panel data: The nature of panel data.- The basics of panel data management.- Three case studies on poverty in Germany.- How to represent a population with panel data?- Conclusion and further reading.- Describing and modeling panel data: Some basic terminology.- Measurements over time are not independent.- Describing the dependent variable.- Explaining the dependent variable over time: typical explanatory variables.- Modeling panel data.- Estimating models for panel data.- Overview of subsequent chapters.- Panel analysis of continuous variables: Modeling the level of Y.- Modeling the change of Y.- Conclusion and further reading.- Panel analysis of categorical variables: Modeling the level of Y: Discrete response models for panel data.- Modeling the change of Y: Discrete-time event history models for panel data.- Conclusion and further reading.- Conclusion: How to do your own panel analysis.- A: Functions of random variables.- B: Estimation and testing: Ordinary least squares.- How to compute a regression model fitting the data?- Sampling and sampling errors.- How to choose between different estimation methods?- How to estimate the parameters of an unknown population with a sample of data?- How to test parameters of an unknown population with a sample of data?- Maximum likelihood .- C: Web site of the textbook.- Bibliography.- Index.