Establishment approach
One approach to building a comprehensive list of postdocs is to go to the institutions that employ them. PDP tested this establishment-based approach by surveying targeted lists of institutions to count postdocs and to identify them for a later survey.
In the establishment approach, the PDP surveyed:
- Nonprofit organizations
- Immigration Databases
- Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Student and Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS)
- H-1B specialty occupation worker
- Visa applications from employers for H-1B type
- US academic institutions
Both the quick-turnaround list assessments and qualitative research challenged the ability of establishments to provide reliable postdoc data:
- Inconsistent content and application of "postdoc" definition
- Barriers to finding contact who is knowledgeable about postdoc-related data
- Inadequate record keeping (with no consistent standards between institutions)
- Limited data on foreign-degreed postdocs
- Proprietary information (primarily in the for-profit sector) that limited the number of institutions who would share their lists
Individual approach
As a parallel task, PDP gathered lists of individual postdocs and surveyed the individuals on the lists:
- Professional scientific organizations
- Lists provided by the establishment-based quick turnaround list assessment surveys
The PDP is currently working on obtaining individual-level data for temporary US residents from the Student and Exchange Visitor Information Service (SEVIS) and H1b data bases. They may help to fill gaps in coverage of postdocs in the non-academic sectors.
Funding source approach
Two additional strategies were considered for building a sampling frame of individual postdocs. They involved reaching out to funding agencies to identify:
1. Postdocs through the federal agencies that fund them—and survey these postdocs directly
2. Principal Investigators (PIs) and survey them to identify postdocs who work on their grants
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