Refugee Cohort 2 – Adolescents

The target persons of the second ReGES cohort – the Refugee Cohort 2 (RC2) – are adolescents who are 14 to a maximum of 16 years old at the start of the study and are still attending lower secondary school level of the general education system. The focus of this cohort is on the transition to upper secondary education or vocational training, which is crucial for the educational career as well as the medium- and long-term integration into the labor market. The extensive survey program includes previous school experiences of the adolescents in the country of origin and, if applicable, during their fleeing, as well as a detailed recording of their school and vocational training history in Germany. Other topics addressed health, social integration, self-assessed German language skills, and various psychological constructs such as motivation, achievement orientation, and resilience. In addition, the young people were tested on their basic cognitive abilities and German language skills.

In this cohort, adolescents serve as the primary respondents. The parents were interviewed about family background only once in the first wave. If the parents did not participate in this survey themselves, but agreed to the participation of the adolescent target persons, the latter were asked in the first wave corresponding questions about the country of origin, the social background of the family, and the educational experiences of the parents.

The consideration of the institutional context was achieved by interviewing teachers and principals at general educational schools, and in later waves also teachers and principals at vocational schools. In this way, supplementary information on the educational offerings was collected. Furthermore, questionnaires were used to receive individual assessments with regard to the linguistic and social competencies of each adolescent target person by the respective class teachers.

Another group of respondents, from whom information on the regional context of the participating families was collected (e.g., ethnic composition, infrastructural conditions), consisted of the staff responsible for the integration of refugees in the respective municipalities and the staff of the relevant collective accommodations.

Data citation

Researchers are obliged to indicate the use of ReGES data in their publications together with the respective SUF version (DOI) by including the following citation in the bibliography:

ReGES-Projekt (2024). Refugees in the German Educational System (ReGES): Refugee Cohort 2 – Adolescents (RC2). Scientific Use File, 3.1.0. Leibniz Institute for Educational Trajectories (LIfBi), Bamberg. https://doi.org/10.5157/ReGES:RC2:SUF:3.1.0

In addition, the ReGES study is to be acknowledged at an appropriate place in the publication, and the reference article to be added to the bibliography:

This paper uses data from the project "Refugees in the German Educational System" (ReGES): Refugee Cohort 2 – Adolescents, doi:10.5157/ReGES:RC2:SUF:3.1.0. The data collection was funded by the German Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) from July 2016 to December 2021 under the grant number FLUCHT03 (project: ReGES) and from February 2021 to summer 2025 under the grant number FLUCHT2021 (project: "Educational Trajectories of Refugee Children and Adolescents"). From summer 2025 onward, funding was provided by the Federal Ministry for Education, Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth (BMBFSFJ). This study was conducted by the Leibniz Institute for Educational Trajectories (LIfBi).

Will, G., Homuth, C., von Maurice, J., & Roßbach, H.-G. (2021). Integration of Recently Arrived Underage Refugees: Research Potential of the Study ReGES – Refugees in the German Educational System. European Sociological Review 37(6): 1027–1043. https://doi.org/10.1093/esr/jcab033

ATTENTION: In accordance with the Data Use Agreement, the LIfBi Research Data Center has to be informed immediately and unsolicited by e-mail (fdz@lifbi.de) about any kind of publication resulting from the work with ReGES data.

Data documentation