Using the American Community Survey for the National Science Foundation's Science and Engineering Workforce Statistics Programs (2008) / Chapter Skim
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5 Adding a Field-of-Degree Question to the ACS
5 Adding a Field-of-Degree Question to the ACS
Pages 41-49
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From page 41... ...
for the upcoming decade as well as for analytical purposes. The salient question from the decennial census was the question on educational attainment, which when combined with other information, such as occupation, age, sex, and racial and minority status, allowed the selection of the sample members for the initial NSCG sample for the decade.
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To avoid unnecessary respondent burden and ensure data quality, the field-of-degree question would be asked only of the group of most interest, which would be most likely to provide usable information. Thus, the proposal is that only those who answer "bachelor's degree" or higher (master's, professional, or doctoral)
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SOURCE: National Science Foundation (2007)
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Some other major field - Specify l__l l__l ______________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________ SOURCE: National Science Foundation (2007)
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Recommendation 5.1: The field-of-degree question on the Ameri can Community Survey questionnaire should be the open-ended version if the Census Bureau and the National Science Foundation agree that it meets the evaluation criteria established for the content test and if an efficient coding procedure can be developed. CONTENT TEST The Census Bureau has a formal process for testing proposed new content for the ACS.
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. In comparing the versions across these criteria, the Census Bureau is using a decision tree that assigns most weight to the comparison with the NSCG, then the item missing data rates and reliability considered together, then the correspondence between the versions, and, finally, an assessment of the impact on the NSCG sampling frame. NSF identified several key issues that need to be resolved regardless of the question version that is chosen (National Science Foundation, 2007, Table 4, p.
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can have a major effect for NSCG sampling because this type of error would lead to unnecessarily sampling a case that does not have a required degree. However, this can easily be resolved during the NSCG data collection, when the case can be identified as ineligible.
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This could be done either by drawing a larger number of apparently non-S&E cases than might be done otherwise or by drawing a portion of the sample using procedures like those used with the long-form sampling frame, i.e., procedures that do not take the field-of-degree information into account. Recommendation 5.2: The National Science Foundation should ask the Census Bureau to conduct an additional evaluation of the field In the categorical version of the question that is now being tested, only one set of S&Erelated fields (health)
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will likely need to be drawn in any NSCG sample from an ACS sampling frame both to provide a comparison group and to account for those in non-S&E occupations with a non-S&E bachelor's degree but an S&E or S&E-related degree at a higher level. Knowledge of error rates for the field-of-degree questions will help NSF and the Census Bureau determine how many such cases would be required.
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