Respondents of the SOEP questionnaire were asked to consult pay records, tax returns, and other documents to help provide the most accurate income information possible. However, it is not known how many respondents used records to help them answer the income or other questions. These weighting procedures did not help adjust for missing data or other nonsampling errors related to the income data. The sum of the survey weights is equal to the total number of units in the sampling frame. Estimates derived from the sample are representative of the total population as defined by the sampling frame.
Households are housing and economic units, comprised of one or more individuals.
Household members need not be related to each other. The basic unit of aggregation which was used in the SOEP was the individual. The overall sampling unit can be divided into subgroups in those situations where several families share the same housing unit. Individuals other than the sampling unit head can be identified, and information about the relationship of individuals to the head of household is available. In this survey spouses are not explicitly defined.