NSF Postdoc Data Project

Goals

The Postdoc Data Project (PDP) is collaboration with the National Science Foundation’s Division of Science Resource Statistics (SRS). It assesses the feasibility of gathering more comprehensive information on all types of postdocs across U.S. employment sectors. The goals of the project are: to obtain a comprehensive postdoc count and to construct a sample frame of all postdocs.

Challenges

NSF has identified several gaps between available postdoc data and the information data users need. Extant survey resources have gaps in covering postdocs who:

  • Have foreign degrees and are working in the U.S. on temporary visas
  • Have PhD-equivalent degrees, such as an MD
  • Have postdoc appointments in non-academic sectors

A substantial portion of the data user needs remained unfulfilled since “many of the important data elements have never been collected, and none of the existing resources meet the need for comprehensive information on all postdoc segments.”

The most significant challenge is that the heterogeneity between employment sectors; each presents unique challenges related to sampling, respondent identification and data collection.

Solutions

SSG chose a flexible, multi-modal approach that uses extensive background research and methodological experimentation to empirically assure the quality of the postdoc sampling frame. This strategy balances flexibility and responsiveness of design with steady progress towards the overarching goal. A selection of our efforts includes:

  • Evaluating coverage of postdocs in current SRS surveys to identify the extent of gaps related to postdocs from the non-academic sector, as well as those awarded foreign PhD or PhD-equivalent professional degrees. 
  • Testing methodologies to obtain postdoc data and postdoc lists, particularly from PhD sub-populations mentioned above.
  • Conducting focus groups, site visits, and workshops to learn more about how postdoc data is organized within institutions. Participants included stakeholders from academic, industry, government, and other sectors with a role hiring and training postdocs. 
  • Collaborating with organizations such as the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the National Postdoctoral Association (NPA), and the Urban Institute (UI) to obtain lists of postdocs or postdoc employers that may erode the data-coverage gap. These partnerships further enabled PDP to incorporate the perspectives, experiences, and data needs of collaborators. 
  • Evaluating Department of Homeland Security (DHS) immigration databases as potential sources for identifying and locating temporary resident postdocs with foreign PhDs.
  • Conducting quick-turnaround surveys with academic and non-academic institutions to optimize methodologies for collecting postdoc data—especially the kind of aggregate data collected by the GSS. 

SSG has been able to evaluate the success and feasibility of multiple efforts for determining the best possible combination of methods to reach the project’s goals. As such, the PDP emerges as valuable not only for the much-needed postdoc data it will eventually yield, but as an example of sound data collection methodology that may be extrapolated to other populations that are similarly difficult to access.

Improved Methodology