Non-respondent letter

Dear Dr. <<lname>>:

Congratulations on completing your doctorate!

In light of this accomplishment, I am writing to invite you to participate in a brief survey conducted by the National Science Foundation and three other federal agencies. The survey results are critical to our understanding of the specialty research areas of doctorate recipients and their post-graduation employment plans. The data from this survey are used by policy-makers in government and universities when making decisions about funding graduate education, developing new programs, and supporting existing ones.

We would greatly appreciate your participation in the Survey of Earned Doctorates. To access the questionnaire on our secure web server, please go online to https://sed-ncses.org. Your PIN and password are below.

PIN: <<$pin>>

Password: <<$password>>

If it is inconvenient for you to complete the survey on the Web, please contact us at 1-877-256-8167 or send an email to sed@rti.org to request a paper version. Please be assured that all information you provide will be kept confidential, and any information publicly released will be in a form that does not personally identify you.

The Survey of Earned Doctorates is an annual census of all research doctorate recipients in the United States, which has been conducted since 1958. The data are collected for the National Science Foundation by RTI International.

If you have any questions about the survey, please contact us using the 1-800 number or email address listed above. Summary reports of the data collected by earlier surveys are available at http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/doctorates.

Congratulations again on completing your degree, and best wishes for the future. Sincerely,

Lynn M. Milan, Ph.D. SED Project Officer