Polpan 1988 – 2013: Challenges for Constructing Questionnaires for Longitudinal Researches of Social Structure and Inequalities

The Polish Panel Survey POLPAN is a unique program of panel surveys carried out since 1988 in 5-year intervals, and focused on describing social structure and its change during the last 25 years in Poland. The resulting POLPAN 1988-2013 dataset will be invaluable for the social sciences, as it will allow for testing hypotheses about the impact of intellectual and social resources on individuals’ biographies, and more importantly, how the latter shape the social structure. The project’s theoretical approach is based on major assumptions of the rational action paradigm and life course analysis developed by Blossfeld and Perin (1998), Mayer (2009), Goldthorpe (2006), diPrete (2006, 2007) and Breen (2010).

Last edition of the study, due to the decision to rejuvenate the panel and the initiation of a new panel cohort, necessarily involved the need of redefinition and reconstruction a way of thinking about research tools used in last waves.

Between 1988 and 2013 Poland underwent transformation - from the "old" and "new" elements in the social structure,  differences in the standard of living, labor emigration on massive scale and its impact in understanding career and education paths, patterns of professional and family life with clear implications for social inequalities. In addition, the twenty-one-year-old of 1989 was a completely different person than his peer in 2013 – there was necessity of in-depth analysis of the meanings of questions self-evident in previous waves, take account of the changes of realities and consideration if questions posed during the communist era will be understood and does not change the meaning today. The challenge was to combine the necessary changes and the need of maximum comparability of panel waves.

In a paper I intend to describe most important of mentioned challenges and give examples of solutions worked by POPLAN team.