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Research in the German National Educational Panel Study intends to provide the empirical basis for a longitudinal analysis of individuals' educational careers and competencies and how they unfold over the life course in relation to formal as well as nonformal/informal learning environments. In order to track educational developments and decisions over the life span, six main samples serve as the foundation for the characterization and analysis of educational processes. These six main samples include newborns, Kindergarten children, secondary school children (fifth and ninth grade), first-year undergraduate students and adults. They are accompanied Z Erziehungswiss (2011) 14:51-65 52 C. Aßmann et al.by several additional samples allowing an analysis of special groups, e.g., special needs pupils. Given that for several of the starting cohorts access to the target population is gained via educational institutions like Kindergartens and schools, multistage sampling approaches reflecting the multistage access to the target populations are implemented. Samples in individual contexts as for the cohorts of adults and newborns are established via register-based stratified cluster approaches. The designs of the implemented sampling strategies are shortly reviewed for each established sample.