Using the American Community Survey for the National Science Foundation's Science and Engineering Workforce Statistics Programs (2008) / Chapter Skim
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7 The ACS and SESTAT in the Future
7 The ACS and SESTAT in the Future
Pages 68-78
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From page 68... ...
workforce in the United States. It will facilitate analysis of several of the key science and engineering workforce questions directly from ACS data, enable more efficient design of the National Survey of College Graduates (NSCG)
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From page 69... ...
With the addition of the field-of-degree data, the ACS information could be tabulated to directly support NSF's mandated indicator reports. The use of the ACS for this purpose will bring advantages of increased reliability from large sample sizes and significantly improved timeliness, though these advantages are counterbalanced by some loss in detail.
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From page 70... ...
Recommendation 7.2: If the American Community Survey is selected to produce indicator reports, the National Science Foundation and the Census Bureau should develop a supplemental program of spe cial, targeted surveys to obtain information on topics and groups of interest. ACS EFFECTS AND SURVEY DESIGN Chapter 6 details how the ACS with a field-of-degree question as a sample frame could positively affect the NSCG.
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From page 71... ...
The decision of how much of the linked data to release involves tradeoffs between the competing goals of producing data that can be used for meaningful statistical analysis, protecting the confidentiality of participants, and avoiding the necessity of asking participants to answer the same questions they have already answered on a previous survey. Linking data from the NSCG to outside sources provides an efficient means to study labor market dynamics on short time scales and to understand how NSCG respondents compare with other college graduates.
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From page 72... ...
Recommendation 7.4: The National Science Foundation should sponsor the development of a matched sample of American Com munity Survey and National Survey of College Graduates respon dents for research purposes with access provided to researchers through the Census Bureau's Research Data Centers. STRATEGIC PLANNING FOR SESTAT The field-of-degree question on the ACS, in addition to using the ACS for sampling purposes, provides a unique opportunity for NSF to engage in strategic planning for the SESTAT system.
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From page 73... ...
NSRCG data are useful for employers and government to understand and predict trends in graduate school enrollment, employment opportunities, and salaries for recent graduates in S&E fields. The NSRCG provides direct information about the employment and continuation into further education of recent bachelor's and master's recipients in those fields.
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From page 74... ...
For example, the ACS alone has no questions that can directly discern recent college graduates or those with a science, engineering, and health master's degree. The advisability of implementing a new ACS-based approach to capture the population currently covered by the NSRCG must take into account not only the relative importance of the two functions that the NSRCG currently serves in the set of SESTAT surveys, but also technical issues.
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From page 75... ...
In addition, schools are able to provide relatively current contact information on recent graduates, along with detailed degree information. The foregoing discussion suggests that there would be some benefit to considering how the ACS can be used to improve the efficiency of the NSRCG as a part of an overall reconsideration of the design of the SESTAT data system.
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From page 76... ...
For example, a narrowly trained technician from a community college may, under the current definition, be counted as a science and technology worker if working in the right industry. It may not take a remarkably higher wage to move this worker from a job in the science and technology sector to one in retail trade, in a technical support position, and hence no longer a technology worker.
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From page 77... ...
A small, well-executed panel survey of college graduates below the doctoral level, drawn from those identified in the ACS, would aid in understanding the labor force dynamics of highly trained workers, even if it did not have the large sample size needed to explore these dynamics in detail for all demographic categories. If supplemented with a longitudinal sample of immigrants with advanced degrees, obtained with the cooperation of the Customs and Immigration Services, a comprehensive understanding of the dynamic labor market would evolve.
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From page 78... ...
A redesigned SESTAT may include its current components, such as the NSCG, for which the ACS could have a large impact as a more efficient sample frame; or SESTAT may become more reliant on the ACS, supplemented by a series of targeted surveys based on trends visible with ACS data, or it may include both. A redesigned SESTAT may even integrate CPS (if a field-of-degree question were added)
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