The Survey of Graduate Students and Postdoctorates in Science and Engineering (GSS) collects information from departments within US academic institutions about:
- Graduate students
- Postdocs
- Non-faculty research staff
SRS has raised concerns about whether one GSS respondent can easily and accurately provide data on all three groups for a given institution. Especially since there may be different record-keeping systems for each group.
RBS Purpose
The GSS Response Behavior Survey (RBS) was developed to:
- Understand respondent behavior when providing postdoc-related data within the scope of the GSS
- Assess the efficiency and effectiveness of the current approach to postdoc data collection at US academic institutions within the GSS
- Inform the development of design options for PDP
The RBS was a first step in diagnosing potential areas of misreporting and identifying areas where further steps of inquiry or action may prove useful. Baseline RBS data assisted SRS with assessing two potential sources of data concerns:
|
Data Concern |
Origin |
Examples |
|
Response bias |
systematic variations in responses (usually at the organizational level) |
|
|
Response variance |
nonsystematic errors in response |
- accuracy of memory or records
- access to records
- knowledge of records
- use of records
- recognition/comprehension of what is to be reported
|
|
|