Changes to the SED 2010-11 Questionnaire from SED 2009

ATTACHMENT 2

CHANGES to the SED 2010-11 QUESTIONNAIRE from SED 2009:

COVER PAGE

Cover Cover: Today’s date included in the information asked for on the front cover.

Rationale: The date of completion was asked until 2007, when it was removed for lack of space. However, this item is used for administrative purposes, particularly when a respondent inadvertently completes two surveys. In those cases, the later survey is accepted and the earlier one filed. The dates which the questionnaire will cover were updated to July 1, 2010 to June 30, 2011.

Cover Cover, 1^st paragraph within the block: Confidentiality Pledge to Respondents.

Rationale: Wording was changed at OMB’s request and cleared through NSF’s Office of General Counsel.

PART A – EDUCATION

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New A7. Stimulus Bill funding question added.

Rationale. This question was added to provide indicators of involvement in governmental stimulus funding activities for researchers and future policy makers as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.

A7. A8. Postsecondary education debt. Two new categories, “70,001 to 80,000” and

“80,001 to 90,000”, were added and the highest range was increased to “$90,001

or more. Please specify.” from “70,001 or more. Please specify.”

Rationale. A review of the responses to this question found that there was

currently no discernable ceiling effect at the “$70,001 or more” category.

However, it is expected that the amount of debt will rise and the current high

category may not be sufficient until 2011 (the last year of the next cycle).

Increasing the highest range should keep pace with growing debt levels over the

next four years.

A9. A10. Additional postsecondary degrees. The descriptors “First Additional Degree”

through “Fourth Additional Degree” were added above the response area.

Rationale. These descriptors should help decrease cognitive burden by clearly

marking the box where each additional degree should be captured.

A11. A12. Month/year first entering graduate school. The questions stem will now

read “In what month and year did you first enter any graduate school in any

program or capacity?

Rationale. A review of A11 against A8 revealed that many respondents are

entering a chronologically later date in A11 than their MA entry date in A8.

Adding the word “any” earlier in the question should emphasize that their response should be based on the first graduate school they attended, not necessarily the date they entered their doctoral program.

A15. A16. Medical or dental degree. This question was reformatted to ask first if the

respondent has earned an MD or DDS, and then if the respondent is currently

earning either of these two degrees.

Rationale. A review of A15 against A9 revealed that there were many instances of

respondents reporting earning or planning on earning an MD or DDS in A15, but

not including that degree A9 (which asks for any postsecondary degrees beyond

the first BA, most recent MA, and PhD). The intent of question A15 is to identify

respondents who have already earned or are in the process of earning an MD or

DDS at the time of their doctorate. This new question wording should eliminate

any affirmative responses from a respondent who may be planning an MD or DDS sometime in the future, but is not actively pursuing one at the time of PhD

completion.

PART B – POSTGRADUATION PLANS

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B1. B1. Location you plan to live in. Answer category for in U.S. was expanded from “State” to “State or territory”.

Rationale. Territories were added to the answer category to make it clear that U.S. territories, such as Puerto Rico, are considered a location in the U.S.

B4. B4. Postgraduation plan types. This question was split into multiple parts, first

to ask if the respondent’s plan was for a “postdoc or further training” or

“employment.” If the respondent chooses “Postdoc”, they will be branched into

B4a, where they will be asked to describe the nature of their postdoc. If they

choose “Employment”, they will be branched into B4b, where they will be asked

to describe the nature of their employment.

Rationale. Data editors of the questionnaire have noted a high frequency of cases

where the respondent chose an option under both “Postdoc or Further Training”

and “Employment”. In these cases, the editors must review the rest of the responses in section B to determine if the job in question was actually a postdoc

or regular employment. While there may be cases where the respondent has two

unique sets of plans, it is likely that many respondents are confused by the format

and think they must chose one from each option. To make the distinction clearer

and cut down on the need for editing, respondents will be first asked if their plans

are for a “Postdoc…” or “Employment,” and will be skipped to the question that

asks for information for those specific types of plans.

B5. B5. Financial support for postdocs. A parenthetical phrase was added to the beginning of the question, (If “postdoc” or further training).

Rationale. This phrase was included to make it clearer that this question was only to be answered if the respondent was taking a postdoc or further training. This was an additional measure taken to improve the postdoc responses and help fix the problem noted above in B4.

New B6. Stimulus Funding Question added

Rationale. This question was added to provide indicators of involvement in governmental stimulus funding activities for researchers and future policy makers as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.

B7. B8. Employer Location. The answer categories were changed from “Name” to “Organization”, “or territory” was added to the “If U.S., State” and a subquestion was added, “Is this a college or university”.

Rationale. The question asks for the “Organization”, not the name so this change was made for consistency. In the U.S. response category, territory was added to State, to make the coverage of that category clearer. The subquestion was added to make the paper questionnaire more consistent with the web survey.

PART C – BACKGROUND INFORMATION

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C5. C5. Place of birth.

C9. C9. Secondary school location. In both questions, “or territory” was added to the answer category, “If U.S., State”.

Rationale. Expanding the “State” category to include U.S. territory makes the coverage of the category clearer to respondents born and raised in U.S. territories.

C11. C10. Disabilities. The screener question was eliminated, and everyone is now asked to answer “yes” or “no” to each of the list of disabilities. No changes were made to the categories.

Rationale. NSF wanted more reliable information on respondent disabilities. It was felt that respondents might be reluctant to say they were “a person with a disability” in the screener question, but might answer in the affirmative if asked if they have the specific disability. That is, the screener question may be a more loaded question than just an objective listing of the categories. Further, cognitive testing literature shows that forcing respondents to answer “yes” or “no” to each answer category in a list, results in more consistent attention to the entire list. We will compare the results from this question with previous disability question responses to see if there is a difference in the results.

C14. C12. Hispanic or Latino. A lead-in screener question was dropped and the answer categories were expanded to include “No, I am not Hispanic or Latino.”

Rationale. The screener question was an unnecessary extra question. The wording in this question is now the same as is asked in the American Community Survey.

C16. C14. Respondent contact information. The information requested in this item

was expanded to include physical mailing address (which is currently asked in

C17) in addition to a phone number and e-mail address for the respondent.

Rationale. Physical mailing address (for the respondent only) was moved from

C17 to C14 to create two distinct questions. The first - C14– now asks for

physical address, phone number, and e-mail for the respondent. Question C15

now asks for address, phone number, and e-mail address for the contact person

only. Keeping respondent contact information separate from contact person

information should help decrease the cognitive burden for these questions.

C17. C15. Contact Person information. The contact person information requested

was expanded to include phone number and e-mail address. Additionally, the

respondent contact information asked for in this question was moved to C14.

Rationale. This information had been asked in the SED beginning with 1998

(phone number) and 2000 (e-mail address), but was inadvertently left off during

the 2007-2009 rounds. These items are used for administrative purposes,

particularly with survey follow-up on critical items. Additionally, the Survey of

Doctorate Recipients uses this information to help locate new sample members.

FIELD OF STUDY LIST

As part of the three year review process described in Section B.4, the verbatim field of study (FOS) responses in questions A2, A8 and A9 were reviewed to identify emerging fields not included in the current FOS list. To be considered for inclusion, the emerging field must have been written in by at least ten respondents from at least three different institutions for three straight years (10-3-3 rule). Additionally, frequencies were also reviewed to determine if any fields in the current list did not meet the 10-3-3 criteria, and were candidates for removal.

Additionally, one field (Environmental Toxicology) was classified as a Health Sciences field according to the SED code frame. However, this conflicted with the classification of this field in NCES’s CIP system, as well as the SDR. Therefore, starting with 2010 this field will be moved to the Biological Sciences to remain consistent with the other major postsecondary field classifications.

The following chart summarizes the fields changes that were made based on this review in 2009:

Field of study	Old Code	New code	Action
Astronomy, Other	-	509	Add field
Computational Biology	-	104	Add field
Educational Policy Analysis	-	808	Add field
Environmental Toxicology	211	167	Change major field
Gerontology (Health Sci.)	-	227	Add field
Gerontology (Social Sci.)	-	684	Add field
Hospitality, Food Service and Tourism Management	-	912	Add field
International Education	-	833	Add field
Medical Physics/Radiological Science	-	577	Add field
Oral Biology/Oral Pathology	-	207	Add field
Robotics	-	415	Add field
Structural Biology	-	155	Add field
Structural Engineering	-	316	Add field
Urban Education and Leadership	-	806	Add field
Virology	-	168	Add field
Comparative Psychology	606	-	Drop field
Slavic (other than Russian)	755	-	Drop field
Business Education	862	-	Drop field
Trade and Industrial Education	888	-	Drop field

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