German Doctoral Candidates and Doctorate Holders Study ProFile

Description

Profile was a longitudinal study focusing on the situation of doctoral candidates and their postdoctoral professional careers. The sample consists of doctoral candidates at universities and funding organizations in Germany. The study started with the first survey in 2009 and finished in 2017. Overall, more than 10,000 doctoral candidates and 3,000 doctorate holders from all scientific fields are available for analysis. The questionnaire covers a number of topics including supervision, financing of the doctorate, mobility, courses attended, personality traits, occupational preferences and job placement after conferral of the doctorate among many more. The successor study of ProFile is Nacaps.

ProFile was initiated by the Institute for Research Information and Quality Assurance (Institut für Forschungsinformation und Qualitätssicherung, iFQ) which is now part of the German Centre for Higher Education Research and Science Studies (Deutsches Zentrum für Hochschul- und Wissenschaftsforschung, DZHW).

ProFile applies decision-making as well as goal/intention frameworks for studying careers.

Meta-Data [meta_data_study]

Study Title (long)	The German Doctoral Candidates and Doctorate Holders Study ProFile
Study Title (short)	ProFile
Coordinating Institution	iFQ/ DZHW
Creator	Kalle Hauss Stefan Hornbostel Marc Kaulisch
Contributor	Almuth Lietz Anja Oppermann Anna Fräßdorf Janine Lange Jeannette Winkelhage Jens Ambrasat Kalle Hauss Manuela Zinnbauer Marc Kaulisch Stefan Hornbostel Jakob Tesch
Sponsor	DFG, BMBF, Budget
Type	Multi-Cohort Panel
Description of Observations	Doctoral Students, Doctorate Holders (holders of ISCED6 research qualification), Drop Outs from Doctoral Training at universities in Germany
Waves	17
Duration	2009-2017
URL	[www.promovierendenpanel.de www.promovierendenpanel.de]
Documentation	http://risis.eu/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/ProFile_Data_Documentation.pdf
Publisher	http://risis.eu/
Keywords	Research Careers Young researchers Occupational Preferences Personality Traits

Documentation

A documentation of the study can be found here.

In addition, the article published in the Data Observer (Lange, Lietz, Ambrasat, Tesch, & Wegner, 2016) describes the study.

Data Collection Rounds [= waves]

The study foresees three surveys, which are conducted by the DZHW: the Initial Survey, the Evaluation Survey and the Follow-Up Survey. Participants are invited through a personalized link to the online questionnaire via a bilingual email with English and German being the available survey languages.

The Initial Survey (carried out between 2009-2016) targets doctoral candidates who participate in ProFile for the first time. The yearly Evaluation Survey (carried out between 2010-2016) focuses on persons, who already participated in ProFile and stated that they are still doctoral candidates in the previous Evaluation or Initial Survey or those who completed their doctoral training in the meantime. The Follow-Up Survey (carried out between 2015-2017) targets doctorate holders who participated in ProFile at least once and completed their doctoral candidacy.¹

In total, 18 surveys are available and can be combined to study individual trajectories, study cohort effects or one-time snap shots.

Analytic Potential

Currently, ProFile is the only survey that covers all disciplines², different types of doctorates (e.g. PhD by published work and taught doctorates) and at the same time spans different universities and funding organizations. ProFile data include persons working on their degree while being employed at a university, being financed by a scholarship or through external (or no) jobs. With regard to postdoctoral employment, transitions into all kinds of employments were observed. Although the majority of respondents after the doctorate reach R2 as their highest career stage, few respondents at R3 and R4 are included in the data set as well. The ProFile data can also be linked with data from the European Tertiary Education Register (ETER) or the Leiden Ranking on the level of the degree granting institutions and disciplines.

Notes

¹ The Follow-Up Survey in 2015 questioned doctorate holders who had indicated the completion of their doctoral candidacy in any Initial or Evaluation Survey between 2009 and 2014, meaning that the award of the doctorate can date back several years. The Follow-Up Survey in 2016 additionally questioned doctorate holders who reported their conferral of the doctorate in the Evaluation Survey 2014 or Initial Survey 2015 but had not participated in the Follow-Up Survey 2015.

² Doctoral candidates from medical faculties are not included in the ProFile sample. This is in line with concerns that an unknown number of German doctoral degrees in Medicine may not be equivalent to an ISCED-8 degree and instead more closely resembles an ISCED-7 degree (Wissenschaftsrat 2002: 11). However, neighboring disciplines to Medicine are included in the ProFile sample (e.g. Human Biology, Health Sciences). The discipline contained in the data is based on an open answer in the survey. In case someone indicates to work on a medicine related topic this person receives the respective coding for Medicine.