National Science Foundation.
Submission for OMB review; comment request.
Under the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995, and as part of its continuing effort to reduce paperwork and respondent burden, the National Science Foundation (NSF) is inviting the general public and other Federal agencies to comment on this proposed reinstated information collection. NSF is forwarding the proposed submission to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for clearance simultaneously with the publication of this second notice. The full submission may be found at
Written comments on this notice must be received by August 21, 2017, to be assured consideration. Comments received after that date will be considered to the extent practicable. Send comments to address below.
Suzanne H. Plimpton, Reports Clearance Officer, National Science Foundation,
This is the second notice for public comment; the first was published in the
The Early Career Doctorates Project was established to gather in-depth information about early career doctorates (ECD), including postdoctoral researchers (postdocs). Early career doctorates are critical to the success of the U.S. scientific enterprise and will influence U.S. and global scientific markets for years to come. Despite their importance, current surveys of this population are limited, and extant workforce studies are insufficient for covering all doctorates who contribute to the U.S. economy. The NSF's Survey of Earned Doctorates and the Survey of Doctorate Recipients are limited to individuals who received research doctorates from U.S. academic institutions, thereby excluding individuals who earned professional doctorates and those who earned doctorates from institutions outside the United States but are currently employed in the United States. The NSF's Survey of Graduate Students and Postdoctorates in Science and Engineering (GSS) provides aggregate level data for all postdocs and nonfaculty researchers regardless of where they earned the degree. However, the GSS is limited to science, engineering, and selected health (SEH) fields in U.S. academic institutions and their related research facilities and is collected at the program rather than the individual level.
Through its multi-year Postdoc Data Project, NCSES determined the need for and the feasibility of gathering information about postdocs working in the United States. However, efforts to reliably identify and gather information about postdocs proved difficult due to substantial variation in how institutions characterize postdoc appointments. As a result, NCSES expanded the target population to include all individuals who earned their first doctorate within the past 10-years. Expanding the population to doctoral degree holders ensures a larger, more consistent and reliable target population. Unique in scope, the key goals of the ECD Project are:
• To broaden the scope and depth of national statistics on the ECD population both U.S. degreed and non-U.S. degreed, across employment sectors and fields of discipline
• To collect nationally representative data from ECD that can be used by funding agencies, policy makers, and other researchers to better understand the labor market and work experiences of recent doctorate recipients
• To gather the diverse definitions for ECD to allow for analysis within and across employment sectors
The current focus of the ECD Project is to conduct a survey of ECD working in three areas of employment: U.S. academic institutions in the GSS, Federally Funded Research and Development Centers, and the National Institutes of Health Intramural Research Programs. NCSES, under full clearance (OMB #3145–0235), has conducted a pilot survey with data collection period spanning July 2014 to March 2015. The Pilot ECDS data was released in January 2017.
Beginning in August 2017, NSF will request lists of ECD from approximately 350 institutions nationwide, and sample 22,855 individuals from these lists. Sample members will be invited to participate in a 32-minute web-based questionnaire. The survey topics cover: educational achievement, professional activities, employer demographics, professional and personal life balance, mentoring, training and research opportunities, and career paths and plans. Participation in the survey is voluntary.
The survey will be collected in conformance with the Privacy Act of 1974, the Confidential Information Protection and Statistical Efficiency Act (CIPSEA) of 2002, and the Federal Cybersecurity Enhancement Act of 2015. The NSF will ensure that all individually identifiable information collected will be kept strictly confidential and will be used for research or statistical purposes.
NSF may not conduct or sponsor a collection of information unless the collection of information displays a currently valid OMB control number and the agency informs potential persons who are to respond to the collection of information that such persons are not required to respond to the collection of information unless it displays a currently valid OMB control number.