CWA 17987:2023

SLOVENSKI STANDARD
01-julij-2023
Priporočila dobre prakse za izvajanje raziskave o sledenju poklicni poti imetnikov
doktorata
Good practice recommendations for implementation of career-tracking survey of
doctorate holders
Ta slovenski standard je istoveten z: CWA 17987:2023
ICS:
03.180 Vzgoja in izobraževanje Education
2003-01.Slovenski inštitut za standardizacijo. Razmnoževanje celote ali delov tega standarda ni dovoljeno.

CEN
CWA 17987
WORKSHOP
May 2023
AGREEMENT
ICS 03.180
English version
Good practice recommendations for implementation of
career-tracking survey of doctorate holders
This CEN Workshop Agreement has been drafted and approved by a Workshop of representatives of interested parties, the
constitution of which is indicated in the foreword of this Workshop Agreement.

The formal process followed by the Workshop in the development of this Workshop Agreement has been endorsed by the
National Members of CEN but neither the National Members of CEN nor the CEN-CENELEC Management Centre can be held
accountable for the technical content of this CEN Workshop Agreement or possible conflicts with standards or legislation.

This CEN Workshop Agreement can in no way be held as being an official standard developed by CEN and its Members.

This CEN Workshop Agreement is publicly available as a reference document from the CEN Members National Standard Bodies.

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Ref. No.:CWA 17987:2023 E
Contents Page
European foreword . 3
Introduction . 4
1 Scope . 5
2 Normative references . 5
3 Terms and definitions . 5
4 Overview of career-tracking surveys . 5
5 Legal aspects . 6
5.1 General. 6
5.2 Consent form . 6
5.3 GDPR and survey protocol . 6
6 Recommendations for career-tracking surveys . 7
6.1 Objectives and methodological design . 7
6.2 Survey feasibility and management . 8
6.3 Sampling and response rates. 9
6.4 Questionnaire . 10
7 Conclusion . 12
Annex A (informative) DocEnhance Questionnaire for survey of doctorate holders . 13
A.1 AIMS OF STUDY . 13
A.2 INFORMED CONSENT FORM . 13
A.3 SECTION 1: DOCTORAL EDUCATION AND TRAINING . 14
A.4 SECTION 2: SKILLS AND COMPETENCIES . 16
A.5 SECTION 3: TRANSITION FROM DOCTORATE TO THE FIRST OR NEXT EMPLOYMENT
................................................................................................................................................................... 18
A.6 SECTION 4: EMPLOYMENT AND CAREER RELATED EXPERIENCE . 19
A.7 SECTION 5: INTERSECTORAL MOBILITY . 26
A.8 SECTION 6: GEOGRAPHICAL MOBILITY. 27
A.9 SECTION 7: DEMOGRAPHICAL DETAILS . 28
A.10 SECTION 8: QUESTIONNAIRE EVALUATION AND FOLLOW UP . 29
Annex B (informative) Example - Informed consent - Form . 30
B.1 Part I: Information Sheet . 30
B.2 Part II: Certificate of Consent . 32
Bibliography . 33

European foreword
This CEN Workshop Agreement (CWA 17987:2023) has been developed in accordance with the CEN-
CENELEC Guide 29 “CEN Workshop Agreements – A rapid prototyping to standardization” and with the
relevant provisions of CEN/CENELEC Internal Regulations - Part 2. It was approved by a Workshop of
representatives of interested parties on 2022-11-15, the constitution of which was supported by CEN
following the public call for participation made on 2022-09-29. However, this CEN Workshop Agreement
does not necessarily include all relevant stakeholders.
The final text of this CEN Workshop Agreement was provided to CEN for publication on 2023-03-29.
Results incorporated in this CWA received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research
and innovation programme under grant agreement H2020-SwafS-08-2019 “Research innovation needs
& skills training in PhD programmes.
The following organizations and individuals developed and approved this CEN Workshop Agreement:
Name organization/individual:
• The Arctic University of Norway (UiT )/Hanne Risan Johnsen, Ulrike Grote
• European Science Foundation/Julia Boman, Mihaela Rusitoru
• Riga Technical University, Latvia/Anita Straujuma, Inga Lapina, Ugis Citskovskis
• University College Dublin, Ireland/Emer Cunningham, Janet Carton
• Technical University of Munich, Germany/Tim Klinge
• UNI Italian National Standards Body/Giacomo Riccio
• CCPIT Commercial Sub-council/ Jack Yao
Attention is drawn to the possibility that some elements of this document may be subject to patent rights.
CEN-CENELEC policy on patent rights is described in CEN-CENELEC Guide 8 “Guidelines for
Implementation of the Common IPR Policy on Patent”. CEN shall not be held responsible for identifying
any or all such patent rights.
Although the Workshop parties have made every effort to ensure the reliability and accuracy of technical
and non-technical descriptions, the Workshop is not able to guarantee, explicitly or implicitly, the
correctness of this document. Anyone who applies this CEN Workshop Agreement shall be aware that
neither the Workshop, nor CEN, can be held liable for damages or losses of any kind whatsoever. The use
of this CEN Workshop Agreement does not relieve users of their responsibility for their own actions, and
they apply this document at their own risk. The CEN Workshop Agreement should not be construed as
legal advice authoritatively endorsed by CEN/CENELEC.
Introduction
According to the Salzburg II Recommendations (EUA, 2010) [1], “The core component of doctoral training
is the advancement of knowledge through original research. At the same time, it is recognised that
doctoral training must increasingly meet the needs of an employment market that is wider than
academia.”
Career tracking has become increasingly recognised as a necessary monitoring tool to map doctorate
holders’ career paths in academia and beyond, and to evaluate doctoral programmes. Career-tracking
surveys enable collecting high-quality data on doctorate holders’ employability and skills utilisation, as
well as tracking the quality of doctorate education, and its impact assessment at individual, institutional
and systemic levels. Career tracking studies are useful for:
1) Getting feedback from doctorate holders working in the variety of academic and non-academic
sectors to identify any skills mismatches and adapt doctoral skills training curricula.
2) Enabling universities and alumni services to enlarge and exploit their professional networks, to get
feedback on relevance of doctoral training curricula and to conduct better and more appropriate
career counselling.
3) Gathering doctorate holders’ contact information and enabling local alumni networking and
mentoring initiatives, and therefore improving involvement of the non-academic sector in doctoral
training.
4) Supporting, by promoting standards for implementation, higher education institutions to adjust and
improve their doctoral training based on actual career trajectories of doctorate holders and market
requirements.
One of the main outputs of the DocEnhance project, the career-tracking survey of doctorate holders from
nine European universities (Boman et al, 2021) [2], intended to enable gathering of information on
doctorate holders’ employability and skills utilization and to facilitate a sustainable and harmonized
assessment of doctoral education in Europe. Thus, the current good practice recommendations for
implementation of the survey represent a practical guide for the universities wishing to implement a
career-tracking survey similar to the one carried out as part of the DocEnhance project. The issues
covered include survey design, planning, survey management and legal aspects.
In this regard, the guidelines with recommendations are published as a European voluntary standard to
increase outreach, impact and longevity of career paths tracking beyond the DocEnhance project
partners. The purpose of this document is to assist higher education institutions in running their own
doctorate graduate tracking for increasing the relevance of their doctoral research and training.
1 Scope
This document gives practical recommendations for implementation of career-tracking surveys. The
current guidelines are meant for universities wishing to set up an institutional career-tracking survey.
These surveys can be set up by higher education institutions, grant funding agencies or national statistics
bodies, with the purpose to improve doctoral education and/or assess its quality and impact at an
institutional or national level. It includes among others, surveys that trace back doctorate holders’ careers
over several years, cohort studies at several moments in time or longitudinal surveys (based on the
definition of career tracking of researchers, European Science Foundation, 2012 [3]; definition of tracking
in EUA’s “Tracking Learners’ and Graduates’ Progression Paths” project [4]).
2 Normative references
There are no normative references in this document.
3 Terms and definitions
For the purposes of this document, the following terms and definitions apply.
ISO and IEC maintain terminological databases for use in standardization at the following addresses:
• ISO Online browsing platform: available at https://www.iso.org/obp
• IEC Electropedia: available at https://www.electropedia.org/
3.1
career-tracking of doctorate holders
systematic approach set up to follow doctorate graduates’ career pathways
3.2
doctoral programme
programme that is designed primarily to lead to an advanced research qualification (EQF Level 8), are
devoted to advanced study and original research and are typically offered only by research-oriented
tertiary educational institutions such as universities (International Standard Classification of Education
(ISCED) 2011) [5]
3.3
doctorate graduate
doctorate holder
person who has successfully completed their doctoral degree (includes both graduates with doctorates
and PhD holders)
4 Overview of career-tracking surveys
Career-tracking studies of doctorate holders can be organized at international/European, national,
regional and institutional levels.
The European University Association – Council for Doctoral Education (EUA-CDE) groups existing career-
tracking initiative under four types based on their purpose and methodology (EUA-CDE, 2020, p. 10-11)
[6]:
a) graduate surveys and exit pools;
b) national graduate surveys;
c) surveys based on registered data;
d) digital alumni platforms.
The EUA-CDE report stresses that it
...