TABLE A-1 and TABLE A-2: Tables A-1 and A-2 display data for the most recent year by subfield of doctorate. The subfields correspond to the fields on the questionnaire's Specialties List located at the back of this report. Field groupings may differ from those in reports published by federal sponsors of the Survey of Earned Doctorates (SED). See inside the back cover for a description of field groupings as reported in these tables. The “general” field categories —e.g., “chemistry, general” —include individuals who either received the doctorate in the general subject area or did not indicate a particular specialty field. The “other” field categories—e.g., “chemistry, other” —include individuals whose specified doctoral discipline was not among the specialty fields.

Table A-1 presents data by doctoral specialty and gender. Table A-2 displays doctoral specialty by citizenship and race/ethnicity. For a detailed description of the racial/ethnic variable, see the explanatory note for Table A-4. Refer to the notice on page 41 for important information on recent increases in response rates and their impact on time-series data.

TABLE A-3: Table A-3 is composed of three two-page tables. The first table includes data on all doctorate recipients from the most recent year; the other two tables present the same data by gender. Field groupings may differ from those in reports published by federal sponsors of the SED. See inside the back cover for a description of field groupings as reported in these tables; see the questionnaire's Specialties List at the back of the report for the names and codes of the subfields included. Terms requiring definition are as follows:

• Median Age at Doctorate: One-half received the doctorate at or before this age. A recipient 's age is obtained by subtracting the year of birth from the calendar year of doctorate. Months are not included in the computation.

• Percentage with Master's: The percentage of doctorate recipients in a field who received a master's degree in any field before earning the doctorate.

• Median Time Lapse: “Total Time” refers to the total calendar time elapsed between the year of baccalaureate and the year of doctorate; “Registered Time” refers to the actual time in attendance at colleges and universities between receipt of the baccalaureate and the doctorate. Enrollment includes years of attendance not related to a recipient's doctoral program. Months are excluded from the computations because they are rarely reported.

Postgraduation Plans: Each year's doctorate recipients provide information on postgraduation employment or study plans in response to items 20–24 on the survey form. Since the questionnaire is filled out around the time the doctorate is awarded, a recipient's plans are subject to change. However, comparisons with the longitudinal Survey of Doctorate Recipients (SDR) have shown SED data to be a reasonable indicator of actual employment status in the year following the doctorate, although results vary by sector. (The SDR, also conducted by the National Research Council, is a follow-up employment survey of a sample of doctorate recipients in science, engineering, and humanities fields.) For a comparison of the immediate postgraduation plans of Ph.D.s in the 1990 SED with their employment status