Getting started

An overview of the theoretical and empirical background, the study design and the content as well as the implementation of the study can be found in the TwinLife reference papers (➔ Hahn et al., 2016; ➔ Mönkediek et al., 2019; ➔ Rohm et al., 2023).

The TwinLife data are described and archived in the ➔ GESIS data catalogue.
To get access to the TwinLife data, please fill in the Data Use Agreement which you can find under 'Actions' in the GESIS data catalogue. All data sets are available with English and German labels in SPSS and Stata formats. You can also follow the direct link to the ➔ Data Use Agreement.

Please acknowledge the use of the TwinLife data in your work by citing both the ➔ dataset (e.g., Diewald et al., 2024) and one of the ➔ reference papers (➔ Hahn et al., 2016; ➔ Mönkediek et al., 2019; ➔ Rohm et al., 2023).

In the Codebooks for each data collection (ZA6701_cod_wid$.pdf) provide a complete description of the variables, including variable and value labels, filter conditions, references, question texts, univariate frequency distributions, and an explanation of variable-specific peculiarities, if applicable. You can find the codebooks at the ➔ TwinLife documentation website.
A list of all variables (including their frequencies), their corresponding question text, answer options, and filter conditions can be found in the Datasets and Instrument files at the metadata documentation platform ➔ paneldata.org.

The questionnaire files include the implemented questionnaires. These files are only available in the original study language (German). Original questionnaires are available on the ➔ Downloads section on the TwinLife data documentation website.
The ➔ Technical Reports Series are scientific contributions dealing with technical aspects of data presentation (e.g. sampling design and data collection, data documentations, field reports, etc.) as well as methodical questions. Furthermore, they contain various reports on data handling for a selection of constructs and variables.