The GESIS Panel is part of GESIS, Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences in Mannheim, Germany. The GESIS Panel offers the social science community a unique opportunity to collect survey data within a probability-based mixed-mode access panel.

Academics from various social science fields (e.g., sociology, psychology, political science, economics, and criminology) at universities or non-commercial research institutes are invited to submit their proposals together with their proposed questionnaires throughout the year. Accepted questionnaires are run free of charge, with the exception of funded research projects, which are required to cover part of the incentive costs.

The GESIS Panel data are representative of the German-speaking population aged between 18 and 70 years (at the time of recruitment) and permanently resident in Germany. By the end of the recruitment phase in February 2014, the GESIS Panel comprised around 4900 panelists. In order to compensate for panel attrition, a refreshment sample was drawn from the German General Social Survey (ALLBUS) in 2016. Now, the GESIS Panel comprises about 4700 panelists (November, 2017). For more details, please see the General Overview and the GESIS Panel reference paper (Bosnjak et al., 2017).

Data collected within the GESIS Panel may be used free of charge by academic researchers, for example to conduct secondary research.