Abstract
Highly educated and skilled people are central to the creation, commercialisation and diffusion of knowledge. Among them, doctorate holders are both the most qualified in terms of educational attainment and those who have been trained to conduct research. Their contribution to the advancement of knowledge is therefore of particular interest to practitioners in charge of steering research and innovation systems. While regarded as essential in a knowledge-based and complex economy, the training of doctoral graduates and researchers is also a long and costly effort. Since 2000, doctoral awards have increased at the same pace as, or even slightly more rapidly than other degree awards. Measuring the return on investment of such long education and training has drawn policy attention. Generic statistical sources on human resources, such as censuses and labor force surveys, are however not fit to provide a full picture of the employment patterns and the contribution of doctorate holders. It is with this in mind that the OECD launched a collaborative project with the UNESCO Institute for Statistics and Eurostat in 2004 that aims to address the evidence gaps about this population group and develop internationally comparable indicators on the labor market, career path and mobility of doctorate holders.
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1 Introduction
Highly educated and skilled people are central to the creation, commercialisation and diffusion of knowledge. Among them, doctorate holders are both the most qualified in terms of educational attainment and those who have been trained to conduct research. Their contribution to the advancement of knowledge is therefore of particular interest to practitioners in charge of steering research and innovation systems. While regarded as essential in a knowledge-based and complex economy, the training of doctoral graduates and researchers is also a long and costly effort. Since 2000, doctoral awards have increased at the same pace as, or even slightly more rapidly than other degree awards. Measuring the return on investment of such long education and training has drawn policy attention. Generic statistical sources on human resources, such as censuses and labor force surveys, are however not fit to provide a full picture of the employment patterns and the contribution of doctorate holders. It is with this in mind that the OECD launched a collaborative project with the UNESCO Institute for Statistics and Eurostat in 2004 that aims to address the evidence gaps about this population group and develop internationally comparable indicators on the labor market, career path and mobility of doctorate holders.Footnote 1
After a thorough review of user needs in terms of indicators, a network of experts (comprising official statisticians) worked to identify the various data sources that could be utilized at national level to build registers of doctoral graduates or produce statistical data. The expert group also collaborated with the three intergovernmental organizations to develop technical guidelines that comprise three components: a model survey questionnaire, methodological guidelines and a set of output tables for collecting data at the international level.
After a pilot in 2005, two large scale data collections were conducted in 2007 and 2010. 25 countries participated in each round and a rich set of data was made available and analysed (Auriol 2010; Auriol et al. 2013). In the context of the 2010 CDH data collection cycle, the OECD also attempted to encourage the use of microdata for purposes other than benchmark-type indicator construction and reporting, although participation in this strand of work was constrained to a limited number of countries.
In the remainder of this chapter, are described in more detail the underlying concepts and methodology of the CDH project (i.e. the technical guidelines) and the way they are implemented at national level.
2 Underlying Concepts and Methodology
The underlying concepts and methodology of the CDH project are described in the technical guidelines developed by the above mentioned network of experts (Auriol et al. 2012).Footnote 2 The technical guidelines are composed of: (i) the methodological guidelines; (ii) a core model questionnaire and instruction manual; and (iii) the output tables used for reporting data at the international level and related definitions. The technical guidelines are currently in their third edition. The latest edition builds on the the two initial large scale data collections, which were based on the previous editions of the technical guidelines released in 2007 and 2010.
2.1 The Methodological Guidelines
The methodological guidelines constitute the basic document which defines the target population and gives the instructions for the survey methodology, data collection, estimation and processing.
The target population consists of individuals who at the reference date fulfill the following criteria:
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have an education at ISCED 1997 level 6 (doctorate) obtained anywhere in the world, and
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are resident (permanent or non-permanent) within the national borders of the surveying country.Footnote 3
The choice of this definition stems from the following needs: (1) to know the total number of doctorate holders at the national level, which in some countries could not be derived from the existing data sources or surveys; (2) to have an overview of the career of doctorate holders at different stages of their career and at varying ages; (3) to cover, in the surveying country, doctorate holders of foreign origin with a view to understand international mobility flows.
The implication of this choice is that the survey to be carried out is of a cross-sectional retrospective nature i.e. it covers the whole population at a certain point of time (which is the agreed reference date in the methodological guidelines) and it includes retrospective questions. This approach is very similar to that of the Survey of Doctorate Recipients (SDR) conducted every other year by the National Science Foundation (NSF) in the United States, and which has greatly inspired the CDH survey. However, it differs from approaches in other countries, such as France or the United Kingdom, which are based on graduate and/or cohort surveys and essentially focused on early career stages, while including in some cases a longitudinal element. The CDH survey nevertheless contains questions about the early career period and also specifically targets recent doctorate holders, defined as those who received their doctoral degrees in the last 2 years.
One of the characteristics of the CDH project is to accommodate the provision of data from different statistical sources (e.g. censuses, labor force surveys, national registers) while proposing a specific survey instrument. The methodological guidelines describe in some length the different data sources that can be used either for building a national register of doctorate holders that will serve as a sampling frame for a dedicated CDH survey or for producing the CDH data as requested in the output tables. Building and maintaining a national register of doctorate holders at national level proved to be particularly challenging. Table 3.3 in the annex gives examples on how several countries that have conducted CDH dedicated surveys approached this task.
Recommendations are also given in the methodological guidelines on data collection methods, sampling, the treatment of unit non-response and non-response surveys, imputation, weighting and calibration.
2.2 The CDH Model Questionnaire
Only a CDH dedicated survey based on the CDH model questionnaire has the potential to provide a comprehensive picture of the employment and mobility patterns of doctorate holders. The model questionnaire developed in the framework of the CDH project addresses the following aspects through six different modules: characteristics of doctoral education, early career research positions, employment situation, international mobility, research career related experience and personal characteristics. Questions on earnings as well as on perception and satisfaction at work are included among these and the latest edition added new questions on competencies.
With few exceptions, all questions included are drawn from already existing surveys or rely on existing experience and have been extensively discussed among the members of the CDH network of experts. They are also reviewed and adjusted after each data collection round. All variables and breakdowns to be collected are defined on the basis of internationally agreed definitions and classifications.
During the implementation of the CDH project, a number of policy and analytical needs appeared that the CDH expert group sought to address through the inclusion of new modules/questions. A couple of these are worth mentioning here.
With a view to know more about the ‘postdoc’ phenomenon, it was decided to include a separate module on ‘early career’ in the second edition of the model questionnaire. Preliminary work had sought to develop an international definition of a ‘post-doctorate’, but this proved to be impossible due to the heterogeneity of existing post-doctorate status and positions both across institutions in one country and across countries. Instead, the CDH expert group preferred to develop an approach that would seek to qualify common characteristics of early careers of doctorate holders, some of which could be assimilated to post-doctorates. This approach was based on a similar and parallel effort under way in the United States.
The question of skills and competencies of doctorate holders and researchers has also become prominent in the policy debate and some countries had already sought to measure competencies in their national surveys before it was decided to develop a common set of questions for the CDH model questionnaire. The latest edition of the model questionnaire therefore includes new questions on competencies that rely on existing experiences in Belgium, the Russian Federation and the United Kingdom.
Only those questions that are necessary for international reporting are mandatory in the CDH model questionnaire, with the remaining questions optional (e.g. the new questions on early career or competencies). Adding questions for national purposes is possible. Flexibility about the way to organise the sequence of questionnaire modules is also given.
Finally, the model questionnaire includes a manual with detailed instructions on how to complete it.
2.3 The Output Tables
The output tables are used for reporting the data at the international level. They consist of 33 mandatory tables and 7 optional tables covering the following areas: personal characteristics, education characteristics, employment situation and perception, international mobility (inward and outward) and scientific output.
Detailed metadata are collected together with the statistical data in order to assess data coverage and consistency with the proposed definitions and methodology as well as the comparability of the data with that of the other countries.
The data are processed by the OECD in an internal database, which is subsequently used to produce a set of indicators made available online and for further analyses.
2.4 The Microdata Work
To address a number of policy and analytical questions, microdata derived from the 2010 data collection were also used for more in-depth investigation. Four key areas of work were identified: (1) early careers of doctorate holders; (2) job-to-job mobility; (3) international mobility and (4) competences and skills of doctorate holders. Using a data coding guide provided by the OECD, ten volunteer countries harmonised their microdata sets to implement tabulations and econometric analyses using a common programming code developed by two national participant institutes: CSIC (Spain) and NISTEP (Japan). Each topic was led by a national participant organization: NISTEP (Japan) for early careers, DGEEC (Portugal) for job-to-job mobility, CSIC (Spain) for international mobility and ECOOM (University of Ghent, Belgium) for competences and skills.
In addition, and with a view to extend the number of countries for which comparisons could be carried out, a special effort was made to define common populations of doctorate holders among surveys of university graduates available for France, Japan and the United Kingdom, and sub-samples within CDH surveys carried out in other countries. These comparisons were carried out under the ‘early career module’ of the project.
Access to and use of microdata has been instrumental in conducting comparative analyses that go beyond traditional benchmark indicators and facilitate comparisons with data from early destination surveys.
3 Survey Implementation: National Practices
The second large scale data collection conducted in 2010–2011 benefitted from the participation of 25 countries.Footnote 4 The data to be reported by the participating countries were on the situation of doctorate holders as of 1 December 2009. In this section, we explain how the above described methodology has been implemented by the reporting countries and how some differences in the data sources and coverage of the target population may affect the comparability of the data.
3.1 Main Data Sources Used to Report CDH Data
One of the most difficult challenges in the CDH exercise is for each country to find the best way to build a directory of its doctoral graduate population. This is paramount in particular to the conduct of a survey using the CDH dedicated questionnaire instrument. Recommendations in the methodological guidelines detail how to approach such a challenge and Table 3.3 in the annex shows several examples on how some countries have done it.
In the end, we distinguish two different groups of countries that use two diverse approaches for producing CDH data:
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1.
Countries that use the CDH model survey questionnaire and hence have built a specific register of doctorate holders;
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2.
Countries that employ already existing surveys and/or registers (or administrative data).
In addition, a number of countries conduct graduate surveys that do not cover the full CDH target population and are not harmonised at the international level but can be used for making comparisons with CDH results about early career stages, using microdata on comparable (sub)-populations.
Table 3.1 below proposes a typology of these data sources showing a few examples that are commonly used.
Among the countries that participated in the latest data collection, we find two economies which used their labor force survey to report CDH data (Germany and Switzerland), four relying on their population registers (Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden) and one using an already existing database (i.e. Chinese Taipei).Footnote 5 All the other countries conducted a CDH dedicated survey as recommended in the methodological guidelines.
The United States, however, represent a case in point. It uses data derived from long and well established surveys, which to a great extent inspired the CDH survey.
As we explain below, the use of these different data sources has an impact on both the coverage of the target population and the coverage of the reported variables.
3.2 Differences in Coverage
The target population as defined in the CDH methodological guidelines is: ‘all individuals who have an education at ISCED 6 level (doctorates) obtained anywhere in the world and who are resident (permanent or non-permanent) within the national borders of the surveying countries’. The main challenge in operationalising this definition concerns the coverage of foreign citizens and those who obtained their doctoral degree abroad.
This challenge is less problematic in countries which rely on labor force surveys (or censuses) and register data (although some of the foreign doctoral graduates may not be fully registered in the latter administrative sources). For countries which have dedicated CDH surveys, foreign citizens or graduates who obtained their doctorate abroad are in most cases under-represented.
In the case of the United States, the sample of doctorate holders has been updated with foreign citizens and those with non-US doctoral degrees at the time of the decennial censuses until the latest 2000 decennial census round. After 2000, the target population only covers those graduates (including foreign citizens) with doctoral degrees obtained in the United States.
It may also be challenging to achieve full coverage of other segments of the target population, e.g. those who received their doctoral degrees in earlier years, those who are inactive or unemployed. Furthermore, once constructed, keeping a register of doctorate holders updated with the new graduates is difficult in certain countries.Footnote 6 In such cases, there are a few other limitations regarding the coverage of the target population in some countries:
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For Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands and Spain, data refer only to graduation years from 1990 and onwards.
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For Romania, unemployed and inactive doctorate holders are underestimated.
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For the Russian Federation, data relate only to those doctoral graduates employed as researchers and teachers.
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For Spain, there is limited coverage of doctorate holders for the years 2007–2009.
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For the United States, data exclude doctorate holders in the humanities.
It is also worth mentioning that while countries that use labor force surveys and register data achieve a better coverage of the target population, they can only report a limited number of variables concerning the main population, labor force and employment characteristics of doctorate holders. They do not include specific CDH variables such as perception of employment situation or international mobility.
Countries using labor force surveys are also limited by the sample size of the doctorate holder population for reporting on certain variables.
Additional country details are found in Table 3.2 below.
Notes
- 1.
All information on the CDH project can be found at: www.oecd.org/sti/cdh
- 2.
The detailed CDH guidelines are available here: http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/5k4dnq2h4n5c-en
- 3.
ISCED (the International Standard Classification on Education) was revised in 2011 and its implementation is expected to start in 2014. The equivalent of ISCED 1997 level 6 will be ISCED 2011 level 8.
- 4.
Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Hungary, Iceland, Israel, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russian Federation, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Chinese Taipei, Turkey, United States.
- 5.
Germany however has since decided to move to a dedicated survey that was conducted for the first time in 2012. This survey not only covers doctorate holders, but also other higher education graduates.
- 6.
This may be due to several reasons: lack of resources and/or difficulties to access the related information (e.g. Spain); or difficulties in locating some of the recent doctoral graduates who may be inactive, unemployed or abroad (e.g. for a post-doc).
References
Auriol L (2010) Careers of doctorate holders: employment and mobility patterns. OECD Science, Technology and Industry working papers, 2010/04. OECD Publishing. doi: 10.1787/5kmh8phxvvf5-en
Auriol L, Schaaper M, Felix B (2012) Mapping careers and mobility of doctorate holders: draft guidelines, model questionnaire and indicators—Third edition, OECD Science, Technology and Industry working paper 2012/7. OECD Publishing, Paris. doi: 10.1787/5k4dnq2h4n5c-en
Auriol L, Misu M, Freeman R (2013) Careers of doctorate holders: analysis of labour market and mobility indicators. OECD Science, Technology and Industry Indicators working papers 2013/04. OECD Publishing. doi: 10.1787/5k43nxgs289w-en
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Auriol, L. (2016). The Careers of Doctorate Holders (CDH): Principles for Broad International Surveys—The CDH Example. In: Gokhberg, L., Shmatko, N., Auriol, L. (eds) The Science and Technology Labor Force. Science, Technology and Innovation Studies. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-27210-8_3
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