To make the educational degrees and diplomas attained in different countries comparable, for all respondents an educational variable (PGISCED) is generated retroactively using the international classification scheme ISCED-1997 (International Standard Classification of Education). It creates the highest degree/diploma attained, taking into account degrees and diplomas attained in both general schooling and in vocational and university education. Here the higher-level vocational and university override lower-level school diplomas. Persons who, for example, have no values for the variables on secondary school degrees/diplomas but state that they have a university degree are placed in the highest ISCED category. Please note that, due to a lack of more detailed information on tertiary degrees -- in particular on doctoral degrees -- we include all tertiary degrees in our ISCED category 6. Thus, the ISCED variable provided here is not comparable one-to-one with the ISCED levels as defined by the OECD, since we have included the original ISCED level 5A in our ISCED category 6. See below for more details.

Since the SOEP-IS does not include a youth questionnaire, the information usually coming from the youth questionnaire was not included in the generation of PGBBILA. Furthermore, since the year 2012, input information from PGBBILA is not being used as PGBBILA itself is not being generated.