Changes to the SED 2014 Questionnaire from the SED 2013 Questionnaire

ATTACHMENT 2

CHANGES to the SED 2014 QUESTIONNAIRE from the SED 2013 QUESTIONNAIRE:

PART A- Education

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A2 A2. Number of reported interdisciplinary fields of study. Change to allow four responses to interdisciplinary field of study in all data collection modes.

Rationale for change. Currently the web mode allows two fields to be entered while hardcopy allows four. For consistency, four fields are to be allowed in both modes.

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A5. A5.Source of Financial Support. Change the question stem to "Please indicate whether each of the following was a source of financial support during graduate school." The 2012 SED currently reads “Which of the following were sources of financial support during graduate school?”

Rationale for change. Recommendation for change is based on methodology review of SED survey items across mode and across similar surveys, such as the Survey of Doctorate Recipients.

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A13. A13.Years not working on degree. Change the question stem to "If yes, how many years were you not working on your degree?” from the current version: “If yes, please provide the number of years.”

Rationale for change. Recommendation for change is based on methodology review of SED survey items across mode and across similar surveys, such as the Survey of Doctorate Recipients.

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A15. A15. Holding MD or DDS degree. Reorder response categories to match order in the question stem. Question version from 2012 SED is listed below. The 2014 question will reverse the order of the response option columns.

Rationale for change. This change will maintain logical order consistency between the question stem and response options.

PART B - Postgraduation plans

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B8. B8. Open-ended salary questions. In the web mode, this salary question will be the open-ended on the first screen and only provide salary ranges if the respondent refuses to provide the exact salary amount.

Rationale for change. This change matches the SDR design for salary question and will collect a higher rate of exact salary responses rather than if salary ranges are provided at the same time. Respondents will still be given the option to provide salary ranges if they do not wish to provide an exact amount. The hardcopy questionnaire will retain both the request for exact range and salary ranges as is in the 2012 questionnaire.

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B9. B9. Salary coverage by months. To further clarify the question (How many months does this salary cover?) to respondents, we will add a parenthetical range reference (1-12) to the hardcopy questionnaire to indicate the range. This range check will be hard-coded in the web questionnaire.

Rationale for change. B9 asks the number of months the reported annual salary covers but currently does not limit the range to no more than twelve months, which is leading to some outlier responses.

C15. C15. Request for SSN and contact information. The 2013 questionnaire will include the addition of assurances of confidentiality right before question C15 that asks for the last four-digits of the respondent’s Social Security Number. This language is as follows:

“REMINDER: ALL INFORMATION YOU PROVIDE WILL BE TREATED AS CONFIDENTIAL and used only for research or statistical purposes by your doctoral institution, the survey sponsors, their contractors, and collaborating researchers for the purpose of analyzing data, preparing scientific reports and articles, and selecting samples for a limited number of carefully defined follow-up studies.”

Rationale for change. On the 2012 web instrument, if the respondent fails to answer the SSN question a prompt appears with the above text explaining the importance of the data. However, the hard copy questionnaire does not contain any explanatory language on the reasons for collecting the last four digits of the SSN. To further allay concerns (and increase item cooperation) of respondents who are completing the hardcopy questionnaire, the 2013 questionnaire will include this same language from the web instrument below the C15 response boxes.

FIELD OF STUDY

Every two years the Federal Sponsors of the Survey of Earned Doctorates meet to evaluate the taxonomy of fields of study used in the SED and to consider fields for addition to or deletion from the taxonomy. The survey contractor provides analytical support for this review, including tabulations of responses to the field of study questionnaire items and content analyses (followed by tabulations) of verbatim responses. Field of study responses not currently in the taxonomy but which appear in the verbatim responses of many respondents over the most recent three year period are considered “possible emerging fields” and become candidates for addition to the SED taxonomy. Fields of study currently in the taxonomy that are not selected by many respondents over the most recent three year period become candidates for deletion from the SED taxonomy. Additional information sources – including scans of university websites, reference to the Classification of Instructional Programs (CIP) taxonomy, and the Federal Sponsors’ subject-area expertise – are brought to bear on the decisions to add or delete particular fields of study.

As a result of the latest (December 2012) field of study review by the Federal Sponsors, the following fields of study have been added to the SED taxonomy:

Description of field of study	Field of study code
Anthropology, Cultural	655
Anthropology, Physical and Biological	656
Computer and Information Sciences, General	418
English as a Second or Foreign Language	863
Gender and Women’s Studies	651
Health and Behavior	280
Medicinal Chemistry	528
Natural Resource/Environmental Policy	685
Wildlife Biology	188
Workforce Education and Development	895

The Federal Sponsors identified three fields to drop from the SED taxonomy:

Description of field of study Agricultural Animal Breeding	Field of study code 005
Ceramic Sciences Engineering	309
Mining and Mineral Engineering	351

The field of study review also led to the following changes to descriptions and/or codes of fields of study currently in the SED taxonomy:

Description in SED 2013	Description in SED 2014	Field of study code
Agriculture General	Agricultural Sciences/Natural Resources, General	098
Agricultural Science, Other	Agricultural Sciences/Natural Resources, Other	099
Anthropology	Anthropology, General	650
Area/Ethnic/Cultural/Gender Studies	Area/Ethnic/Cultural Studies	652
Computer and Information Science, Other	Computer and Information Sciences, Other	419
Epidemiology (code = 220)	Epidemiology (code = 134)	134
Medicinal/Pharmaceutical Sciences	Pharmaceutical Sciences	240