In our Data Archive, over nearly 7000 studies on social science issues are available for secondary analysis. The GESIS Data Archive is among the most extensive in the profession in the German-speaking area and has obtained the Core Trust Seal, and is thus certified as a trusted digital repository.
You can download the studies and the accompanying material easily and user-friendly from our Data Catalogue.
GESIS is part of national and international consortia of archives and data networks, it participates in the development of international standards, and it makes important German data collections available to the international research community and vice versa.
 | German researchers have access via GESIS to all datasets provided by the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research in Ann Arbor Michigan (USA) or to various weakly anonymised data in a saferoom within the framework of the IDAN network. |
 | In the Consortium of European Social Science Data Archives (CESSDA), GESIS is the national data service for Germany and involved in the CESSDA workpackages, with the aim of enabling excellent social science research, increasing data availability, and facilitating the reuse of archived data. |
International Social Survey Programme (ISSP) | The ISSP is a cross-national collaborative program. Since 1984, it has conducted a joint annual survey on topics of relevance to the social sciences. It is currently fielded in about 50 countries. The various modules are repeated every ten years, thus allowing comparative analyses across time and countries. |
Eurobarometer Survey Series | Commissioned by the European Commission, the Eurobarometer surveys have been monitoring public opinion in the European Union since the early 1970s. The survey series Standard Eurobarometer is conducted twice a year and ask for attitudes towards important European topics, complemented by measurements for general socio-political orientations. The Special Topic Eurobarometer is conducted intermittently and address current topics such as environment, technology, health, or family issues. |
European Values Study (EVS) | The European Values Study (EVS) is a large-scale, crossnational, repeated cross-sectional survey research programme on basic human values. Conducted at nine-year intervals since 1981, the surveys provide insights into the ideas, beliefs, preferences, attitudes, values, and opinions of citizens throughout Europe since 1981. |
 | Our Research Data Center International Survey Programs intensively curates international survey programs, all of which cover a long periods of time and large number of countries. |
 | Since 1980, representative cross-sectional samples of the German population have been surveyed at regular two-year intervals, using constant and variable questions. ALLBUS is a substantively rich and methodologically sophisticated database which can be used for a variety of analytical purposes:
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German Longitudinal Election Study (GLES ) | As the largest German national election study, GLES has been observing and analyzing the electorate since the national election in 2009. The study is characterized by a complex research design with nine components, which are linked by a uniform core questionnaire. |
Politbarometer | The Politbarometer surveys have been conducted about once a month since 1977 on behalf of the German public service television station ZDF. |
The Elections Research Data Center curates a large number of studies on German national and federal state elections. You can find there more more representative cross-sectional surveys, panel surveys, and cumulated surveys on all German national elections since 1949. The federal state election studies go back as far as 1962. |
 | The Research Data Center PIAAC provides access to German and international data from the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC). Initiated by the OECD, the first wave of PIAAC was conducted in 2011/ 2012, the second has started 2022. |
PIAAC Longitudinal | follows up the German PIAAC sample with three additional waves of data collection. |
German PIAAC National Supplements |
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The following is a selection of international data collections from the almost 7,000 German and international studies that are available at GESIS available for secondary analysis:
Studies of the Federal Centre for Health Education: | Health education and promotion are the goals of the Federal Centre for Health Education (BZgA). Based on nationwide studies the BZgA optimize and develops measures to archive these goals. |
Federal Press Office Surveys: | As a decision-making aid for the Federal Government, the Press and Information Office of the Federal Government surveys attitudes and moods of the population with regard to current political issues. |
TwinLife: | Since 2014 TwinLife surveys more than 4,000 pairs of twins and their families in Germany in different stages of life on a yearly basis. Social and genetic mechanisms as well as covariations and interactions between these two factors can be examined with the help of identical and fraternal same-sex twins. |
GIP - the German Internet Panel | The German Internet Panel (GIP) is a longitudinal study at the University of Mannheim and researches individual attitudes and preferences relevant in political and economic decision-making processes. variety of topics. |
Studies of the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA): | The European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights help safeguard the EU’s Charter of Fundamental Rights through collecting and analyzing comparable data for evidence based independent advice. |
Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Survey in Four European Countries (CILS4EU): | The panel survey of adolescents is designed to study the complex causal mechanism of structural, social, and cultural integration of adolescents with migration background. The panel data is available for eight waves from 2014 till 2020. |
Europinions: | The study focuses on the nature and composition of citizens’ EU attitudes. With comparative data collected with a multi-method research design the causes of these attitudes, their development over time, and their effects with focus on the role of the media can be analyzed. |
Collecting social media data and other digital behavioral data (DBD) up to the standards of social science research is a non-trivial task and often a challenge to individual researchers. GESIS offers a range of collected, curated, and augmented datasets; these data are transparent, ready-to-use and often accompanied by additional materials or tools.
We concentrate on topical data relevant for the social sciences, training data – e.g., for attribute or opinion detection – or large datasets that can be further mined for individual research purposes.
German Federal Elections: TweetsCOV19: Invasion@Ukraine: ‚Call me sexist but‘ (CMSB): | Monitoring of Facebook and Twitter posts in the German federal election campaigns 2013, 2017, and 2021. |
TweetsCOV19: Invasion@Ukraine: ‚Call me sexist but‘ (CMSB): | Semantically annotated corpus of tweets related to the COVID-19 pandemic from October 2019 onwards. |
Invasion@Ukraine: | A dataset of raw tweets collected between February 17 and March 3, 2022, produced by 2.3 million individual user accounts. |
‚Call me sexist but‘ (CMSB): | A dataset to analyze different dimensions of sexism in social media, including overt hostile sexism, ‚benevolent‘ sexism, or more subtle forms that pose a particular challenge for automatic detection techniques. |