BREAKING NEWS:
ABOUT THE SIGMA XI SURVEY
The Sigma Xi Postdoc Survey project, funded through a grant from The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, seeks to improve the training and research experiences of postdoctoral researchers. The survey looks to provide a better understanding of the factors that contribute to productive postdoctoral experiences, and it will enable institutions to benchmark their postdoctoral policies and practices against those of their peer institutions. The National Postdoctoral Association helped Sigma Xi to coordinate a number of these local surveys during the 2003-2004 academic year. Local results have been made available to participating institutions, and the results are to be pooled to obtain information about the postdoctoral population at the national level.
Empowering Local Institutions
Sigma Xi, the NPA, Science's Next Wave, and the National Bureau of Economic Research's Science and Engineering Workforce worked to create a set of resources designed to help postdoctoral offices and associations survey their postdocs in an efficient and methodologically sound manner. The basic survey materials were made available at no cost to participating institutions.
Survey Questions
Survey questions focused on postdocs’ research activities, their career goals, and their perceptions of the policies and practices at their institutions.
Professional Design
Sigma Xi worked with RTI International’s survey methodologists to provide:
- a set of professionally worded and tested survey questions,
- the opportunity to extend the core questions to include items of local interest,
- professionally designed methodological guidelines, and
- a comprehensive privacy policy and data protection guidelines.
Tools and Support
Sigma Xi offers a toolkit to support local surveys that will contain:
- publicity and marketing materials for encouraging survey participation,
- modest financial resources for local survey expenses,
- the use of Sigma Xi’s software for conducting web surveys, and
- Sigma Xi administrative support.
Benchmarking Success
Postdoc associations and offices have found surveys to be an effective mechanism for optimizing the postdoctoral experience. Sigma Xi have furthered these successes by providing:
- professionally designed data analyses,
- a set of customized reports, and
- pointers to useful contextual materials.
Partners and Advisors
Sigma Xi's partners helped to shape the survey content, recruit postdoc offices and organizations as participants, and disseminate survey results. These partners are:
- National Postdoctoral Association
- The Postdoc Network at Science’s Next Wave
- Sigma Xi Chapters
- The National Bureau of Economic Research’s Science and Engineering Workforce Project
For more information, visit on the project please visit the Sigma Xi Survey pages or contact postdoc@sigmaxi.org
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