Dear participants of the survey “My way in Germany”,
Welcome to our information pages. Thank you for participating in our survey. Here we would like to inform you about the background of the survey and the next steps.
Between December 2024 and April 2025, around 50,000 people took part in our survey. In the coming years, you will again have the opportunity to participate in further survey rounds. We greatly appreciate your support. Without your responses, it would not be possible to paint an accurate picture of life in Germany and abroad, which is essential for science and politics. So far, there are hardly any scientific studies that survey people of working age in Germany and abroad about their living and working conditions in this way.
In order to provide you and the general public with insights into the study, the IAB has compiled the information below based on the survey. This also includes comments from the people who plan and conduct the survey.
The study is conducted by:
Institut für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung (IAB)
We guarantee the protection of your data.
Compliance with data protection regulations is strictly monitored by the IAB. All results are presented exclusively in anonymised form, i.e. without names, addresses or contact information. No data that could identify you personally will be passed on. You can cancel your registration for the survey at any time. Further information can be found under Data Protection.
Your participation is important!
Only when we know what experiences migrants have in everyday life or in the labour market, how they think and live, can we give good advice to politicians.
Data protection
The information obtained from the surveys will be processed in accordance with strict data protection regulations and stored separately from your name and address. The Federal Employment Agency, represented by its Executive Board, Regensburger Str. 104, 90478 Nuremberg, is responsible for processing personal data in the context of this survey. The technical implementation of the survey is carried out by the company Ingress as a contractor of the Institute for Employment Research. Ingress acts exclusively on the instructions of the Institute for Employment Research and is bound to strict confidentiality. Further information on Ingress can be found at: www.ingress.de. Within the Institute for Employment Research, only the researchers involved have access to the data from the survey. All participants are also contractually bound to strict confidentiality. The various data sources of the BA include employment information from companies, as well as information from the BA on unemployment or measures.
Unfortunately, it happens time and again that companies or even BA employees report the wrong nationality. If this applies to you, we apologise for any inconvenience.
The Institute for Employment Research (IAB), the German Federal Employment Agency’s research institute, is conducting an online survey about its German and English online offering in order to tailor it even more closely to your needs and requirements. We would therefore like to find out your views, wishes and suggestions.
Why is your participation important?
Your participation in the survey is, of course, voluntary. However, in order for the IAB to meet the needs of users with its German and English-language website, it is very important that as many of you as possible take part in the survey. We therefore kindly request your participation in this survey, which will contribute to the further development of our website.
How does the survey work? The online survey will run until 10 October 2025. It will be conducted and evaluated by Rhenus :people! Solingen GmbH/TEMA Marketing-Service, a service provider commissioned by the IAB. The questionnaire is available in both German and English. It takes about ten minutes to answer the questions. You enter your responses by inputting the relevant information on your computer or mobile device. While taking the survey, you can navigate back and forth between the questions. Your responses will remain anonymous. You can stop participating in the survey at any time until you submit your survey responses (survey data) on the last page. Any data entered prior to this will be deleted without further processing. You can also leave individual questions unanswered.
Is data protection guaranteed?
An internet browser with an encrypted connection will be used for the survey. During the online survey, your responses will be anonymised and saved automatically. Personal contact information (email address, home address) will not be collected. No host names or IP addresses will be captured and stored in the survey results. No information about your device or your location will be captured. The survey will not be evaluated on a person-specific basis. It will not be possible to match the responses to individual participants. Information entered in text fields will be analysed and grouped into categories; these results will not contain any personal data either. The anonymised data collected in the online survey will be stored until the end of the survey on the server of the service provider engaged by the IAB and mentioned in the introduction, Rhenus :people! Solingen GmbH/TEMA Marketing-Service. All responses will be deleted once they have been evaluated. No data will be passed on to third parties. The survey results will be used solely to improve the IAB’s internet presence. Please also refer to our privacy policy.
Where can you find further information?
If you have any queries, please contact the IAB’s Media and Communication service department: IAB.MK@iab.de.
The Institute for Employment Research (IAB) is conducting a research project on the digitalization of the working world, funded by the Federal Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs (BMAS). Many employees are affected by an increased use of digital technologies, leading to changes in work processes and job requirements. The project aims to examine how this affects the working conditions of employees.
Why is your participation important?
The collected data form the basis for scientific publications and policy advice. The survey results contribute to gaining new insights into the impact of digital technologies on the working conditions of employees and to conveying these insights to policymakers.
Survey Procedure
The survey is conducted online. Participation is voluntary, and there are no disadvantages if you choose not to participate. It takes approximately 10 to 15 minutes to complete. You will receive a QR code by mail for scanning or a link to enter into your internet browser.
How did the IAB receive your contact details?
The IAB is the research institute of the Federal Employment Agency (BA). The IAB is an office of the BA and has received your contact data from the BA database – in strict compliance with data protection. There is a legal basis for the associated interference with the right to informational self-determination: In accordance with § 282 para. 5 Third Book of the Social Code (Drittes Buch Sozialgesetzbuch – SGB III), the data of the BA are made available to the IAB and may be used and processed there for its purposes. The IAB may also carry out surveys without the interviewees being obliged to provide information if the information cannot already be taken from the data provided.
Who has access to your contact information?
The invitations to the survey are sent by a trustee – the IT department of the IAB. Neither the participating researchers of the IAB nor third parties have access to further contact information.
What happens to your information?
Your information will be treated in strict confidence and in compliance with the regulations of data protection. This means that the results of the survey will only be presented in anonymized form, i.e. without name and without address. Nobody can tell afterwards whether you participated in the survey or what answers you gave.
Your answers will be transmitted by the trustee – the IT department of the IAB – in anonymized form to the participating researchers at the IAB. Of course, you can also leave individual questions unanswered. The data of all participants will be evaluated together and published in an aggregated form. Therefore, only average values or percentages are reported in tabular form. Individual information is not recognizable. The data will be used for research purposes only.
The IAB deletes the data collected during the survey in accordance with the principles of good scientific practice ten years after the completion of the project.
Other data protection-related aspects
Responsibility for Data Collection
The Federal Employment Agency (Regensburger Straße 104, 90478 Nuremberg, represented by its Executive Board) as the supervisory authority of the IAB is responsible for the processing of personal data in the context of this survey.
Your Rights
You may request information about your data held by the IAB, including whether to rectify, erase, transfer or restrict the processing of your data, and whether to grant your objection to the processing. You may also revoke your consent at any time; however, the data processing is lawful until you revoke your consent. Please contact: IAB.Digitalisierung-Arbeitswelt@iab.de
Data Protection Officer of the BA
The BA has a Data Protection Officer, whom you can contact at the postal address "Bundesagentur für Arbeit, Datenschutzbeauftragter, Regensburger Straße 104, 90478 Nürnberg" or through the contact form available on the BA's website: https://web.arbeitsagentur.de/portal/kontakt/de/weitere-themen/datenschutz
Data Protection Supervisory Authority
You have the right to lodge a complaint with the BfDI - Federal Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information, Graurheindorfer Str. 153, 53117 Bonn.
The measures taken to contain the Covid-19 pandemic since early 2020 have drastically changed the daily life of many families. Particularly the temporary closure of schools and other public institutions from mid-March 2020 coupled with the economic impact on businesses presented massive challenges for lots of parents, young people and children. In most federal states, pupils had been deprived of face-to-face teaching for nearly ten weeks before schools were eventually reopened.
Switching to remote learning implied that the learning development of schoolchildren more than ever depended on how well children and teenagers organised themselves, how schools and teaching staff handled the situation, and how the family environment supported learning from home. Moreover, not all pupils were appropriately equipped – neither in terms of technical infrastructure nor space available for learning. As for the young people transitioning to the further course of education and vocational training, the absence of career guidance and other ways of vocational orientation coupled with the economic crisis additionally complicated the access to the labour market and further training.
The scientific study ‘Corona and You’ (CoDu) (German title: ‘Corona und Du’) highlights the changes to the life situation of children, teenagers and their parents as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. The Institute for Employment Research (IAB), in cooperation with the University of Potsdam and the German Centre for Higher Education Research and Science Studies (DZHW), is conducting a number of nationwide surveys among some 10,000 children and young people of different age groups as well as their parents. The study focuses on children who are about to switch or just switched to secondary school as well as on young people at the end of their compulsory school age, i.e. at the time of transitioning to the labour market or secondary education stage II.
The main objective of this study is to analyse the individual educational decisions of these children and to work out how the state support of families and their children can be adjusted in a targeted way. From the empirical point of view, the key consideration here is the influence of the state support (in counteracting the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic) on
the transfer of school children to a secondary school,
the transition of young people to vocational training or secondary education stage II, and
the transition of young people to the labour market.
Data Privacy
Information on data privacy
The Institute for Employment Research (IAB), in cooperation with the University of Potsdam and the German Centre for Higher Education Research and Science Studies (DZHW), conducts the online survey ‘Corona & You’. It is ensured that the information you provide will be treated confidentially and will not be associated with you personally. Your participation in the survey is voluntary, and your information is anonymous. Regardless whether you decide to take part in the survey or not, you will not suffer any disadvantage.
How did the IAB obtain your contact details?
The IAB is a research institution of the Federal Employment Agency (BA). The IAB is a BA office and has obtained your contact details from the database of the BA while strictly observing the requirements of data protection. The BA database is compiled from the mandatory data required to execute the tasks pursuant to the German Social Codes SGB II and SGB III and also includes the employers’ notifications to social insurance. There is a respective legal basis for the associated encroachment on the right to informational self-determination: According to Section 282 Para. 5 SGB III and Section 55 SGB II, the IAB obtains the data of the BA and may use and process these for research purposes. The IAB may also ask people to take part in surveys if the required information cannot be obtained from the available data of the BA.
Who is responsible for data processing (controller)?
Responsible for the processing of personal data is the Bundesagentur für Arbeit, represented by the Executive Board, Regensburger Str. 104, 90478 Nürnberg, Germany.
What will happen to my contact details and the information provided?
You will receive an invitation to a survey from the IAB by post or e-mail. Ingress, the IAB’s agent, is responsible for the technical implementation of the survey. The company Ingress acts strictly and exclusively in conformity with the instructions by the IAB and is bound by a strict obligation to maintain secrecy. All your data will be treated as strictly confidential and in compliance with the data protection requirements. Your answers will be forwarded to the researchers participating in the project without your name and address. The researchers will thus process your data separately from your name and your address to make sure that no inferences can be drawn about your identity. No one can find out at a later point whether or not you took part in the survey or what answers you gave. Of course, you are free to leave some of the questions unanswered. The information provided by all participants will be analysed as a whole and then published in aggregated form. Only average values or percentages will therefore be presented in a tabular form. It is not possible to discern the information provided by individual persons. The data will be used for research purposes only. In the IAB Research Data Centre (FDZ), the anonymised answers will also be made available to external researchers for analyses.
Which access data / log files will be stored?
When you visit our website, so-called log files are generated which provide information on the activities on our website and help us improve our processes. Log files store the IP address, the browser and the operating system used by the website visitor.
Which cookies are used on the website?
The so-called session cookies are used. These are small text files stored in the local cache of the browser. These cookies are deleted again when the browser is closed. In most browsers, you can deactivate the use of cookies. To do this, search for the corresponding entries in the data protection options of your browser settings. It is normally possible to use our entire platform with blocked cookies. In this case, however, some individual functions and forms may not work quite as you would expect for technical reasons.
SSL encryption
To secure the data transmitted by you, for example, in inquiry forms, we encrypt the data traffic between you and our website with an SSL connection. A secure connection is usually recognizable by a lock on the left or right in the address line of the browser.
Your rights to access, rectification, and erasure
You have the right to obtain access to your personal data stored and their usage free of charge. You also have the right to have your stored personal data rectified. If the data are not required for prescribed data storage for business purposes, you may request erasure of your personal data stored by us. If you wish to effect access, rectification, or erasure, you may request this by contacting the address stated under the respective service.
Withdrawal of consent
If data are processed on the basis of the data subject’s consent, the consent may be revoked at any time with effect for the future without giving any reason. The processing performed until withdrawal remains unaffected.
Right to appeal
Data subjects may contact the Federal Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information (Bundesbeauftragte für den Datenschutz und die Informationsfreiheit, Husarenstr. 30 in 53117 Bonn) if they believe that the processing of the respective data infringes the General Data Protection Regulation.
Further aspects relevant to data privacy
You can contact us at any time to exercise your rights pursuant to the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Do you have any questions regarding data privacy in the BA? Please contact our data protection officer Marc Rompf: Postal address: Bundesagentur für Arbeit, Stabsstelle Datenschutz, Regensburger Straße 104, 90478 Nürnberg, Contact form: https://web.arbeitsagentur.de/portal/kontakt/de/weitere-themen/datenschutz
The Institute for Employment Research investigates processes of labour market and societal integration of refugees in Germany. The aims are a) to understand pathways of refugee integration in their complexity, b) to uncover efforts and obstacles to integration and c) to derive conclusions for policy makers and labour administration.
Why were you invited to participate?
The study approaches the social integration of refugees from different angles. We talk with refugees, but also representatives of local authorities, associations, jobcentres and other actors from civil society (such as volunteers, human rights organisations or churches).
Why is your participation so important?
It is important to include different actors from the host society and refugees. Including these perspectives facilitates a nuanced and detailed understanding of integration processes. The validity of the study depends on your participation. We would be very happy if you participated in this study!
Procedure
We will send you a cover letter briefly describing the study and asking for your participation in a one-to-one conversation. You can make an appointment either via telephone or email or just wait for us to contact you by phone. The talks are qualitative and partly structured. This means that you will have the opportunity to present your views and experiences. If the conversation takes place in languages other than German or English, an interpreter will be present. The conversation will take approximately 90 minutes (120 minutes with interpreter). Refugees get an expense allowance of 20 EUR.
Data privacy
The Institute for Employment Research takes data privacy very seriously and complies with the relevant legal provisions. The conversations will be tape-recorded. Results will solely be published anonymously. This means: It is impossible to identify individual persons. Your participation in the study is voluntary. There are no disadvantages if you do not participate. At the end of the talk you can sign an informed consent on data privacy. You may revoke your consent at any time with effect for the future.
Where do I get further information?
If you have any further questions, please do not hesitate to contact Stefan Bernhard per E-mail at the Institute for Employment Research.
Use of cookies and other technologies
We want to tailor our online services to your needs. For this purpose, we use so-called cookies. You can decide for yourself which cookies you allow. Your consent can be changed at any time under Cookie settings in our privacy policy. For more information, see our privacy policy.
