The analysis of participation in further education and training is often determined by a rather global approach, especially in the context of monitoring concepts but also in single empirical studies. By focusing on academics only and by differentiating varied types of participation in vocational further education, the presentation will show results for an excerpt of the complex structure of participation in further education. Following the hypothesis of participation in vocational further education being strongly related to characteristics of the professional structure and workplace, the presentation will focus on the relation of further education and characteristics of the employment system. Thereby participation in vocational further education for individual and company-related reasons will be differentiated, taking into account varying conditions and causal mechanisms of participation in these contexts. Trend and cross-sectional analyses will be applied. Narrowing down the focus of the analysis will support understanding the patterns of participation and non-participation in vocational further education for a specific qualification group. This approach places high demands on the database used for analysis. The German datasets ‘Continuing Education Reporting System’ (CERS) and ‘Adult Education Survey’ (AES) will be evaluated against this background and conclusions for further requirements in data will be drawn.