SIST-TP CWA 17987:2023

SLOVENSKI STANDARD
SIST-TP CWA 17987:2023
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
SIST-TP CWA 17987:2023 en,fr,de
2003-01.Slovenski inštitut za standardizacijo. Razmnoževanje celote ali delov tega standarda ni dovoljeno.

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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.

CEN members are the national standards bodies of Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France,
Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Republic of North
Macedonia, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Türkiye and United Kingdom.



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CEN-CENELEC Management Centre: Rue de la Science 23, B-1040 Brussels
© 2023 CEN All rights of exploitation in any form and by any means reserved worldwide for CEN national Members.


Ref. No.:CWA 17987:2023 E

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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

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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.
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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.
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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;
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c) surveys based on registered data;
d) digital alumni platforms.
The EUA-CDE report stresses that it is important to fully consider the purpose of the study to choose the
best fitting methods to collect data on doctorate graduates. The report discusses the advantages and
disadvantages of each type of survey: e.g., low response rates in case of institutional or national surveys
of doctorate holders, as well as the lower reliability of data (based on respondents’ perceptions or
opinions) compared to e.g., register-based data on employment. On the other hand, institutional surveys
allow for more fine-grained data to be collected compared to national surveys and register-based surveys,
adapted to the needs of the participating institutions or programs (e.g., on satisfaction with doctoral
training, or its impact on careers), and enable to reach and collect data on doctorate graduates who have
moved abroad.
5 Legal aspects
5.1 General
The universities setting-up a career-tracking survey are responsible for complying with the applicable
international, EU and national laws (in particular, at the EU level the GDPR [7] (see 5.2), national data
protection laws and other relevant legislation) on the protection of individuals with regard to the
processing of contact and personal data. When carrying out a career-tracking survey, data privacy laws
and regulations should be respected while contacting doctorate graduates and collecting data.
5.2 Consent form
Before starting to fill out the questionnaire, respondents should sign an informed consent form. An
example of the Informed Consent Form used for the DocEnhance project is provided in Annex B. The
informed consent form should consist of two parts:
1) Information sheet (for sharing information about the purpose of research, type of research
intervention, participant selection and voluntary participation, procedures and duration of the
questionnaire, risks and benefits, confidentiality and sharing of results, right to refuse or to withdraw
and contact to do it, if needed), and
2) Certificate of consent (for signature).
5.3 GDPR and survey protocol
There are some aspects to bear in mind:
1) Organizations are responsible for respecting the GDPR regulation at the European, national, and
institutional level for guaranteeing the respect of personal data; contacting a university data
protection officer or legal advisor is necessary to explore the possible ways to contact the doctorate
alumni and handle the collected data.
2) Some organizations require to first obtain the consent from the graduates to contact them for a
follow-up career-tracking survey after graduation. Other organizations may only have institutional
emails which may have become outdated or not used.
3) Ideally, at the moment of collecting doctoral researchers’ personal contact details, e.g., their personal
email address or telephone number when enrolling, during their doctoral programme, before
graduation or when for instance becoming member of university’s alumni association, such consent
could be sought to be able to contact graduates in the future. If country-specific laws allow for the
involvement of third parties and universities wish to pass on the doctorate graduates’ contact data
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to a third party that would carry out a career-tracking survey on their behalf, rather than contact
their doctorate graduates directly, universities must have the prior consent from the graduates while
also acting within the data protection regulations of the university.
4) Universities should strive to maintain a database of contact details of all doctorate graduates,
including the information on their faculty and year of graduation (and possibly other characteristics),
in a centralized manner at the university level or at the level of the alumni office.
5) It is important to regularly update the email addresses of the doctorate graduates with the help of
Newsletters, engagement with alumni activities or other scientific events.
6) Personal data, including personal email addresses, need to be stored and used in compliance with
legal and regulatory requirements.
Collecting no personal data (e.g., name, date of birth, thesis title) and minimal potential identifying data
in the survey is advisable and is likely to increase response rates and to enable respondents to truthfully
answer questions e.g., on satisfaction with their doctoral training programme. The disadvantage of fully
anonymous surveys is that it is not possible to follow up the same respondents with follow-up surveys, if
the goal is to track their career paths in the future.
If the survey is fully anonymous, it is recommendable, at the end of the survey, to ask respondents for a
contact email and their agreement to be approached in view of future surveys.
6 Recommendations for career-tracking surveys
6.1 Objectives and methodological design
Each survey has its own objectives and characteristics and implicitly, it is addressed to a specific and
targeted population and has an appropriate set of questions. The scope of the survey should be carefully
considered, as well as the method and expected outcomes. One needs to take into consideration the
available resources, including the budget and staff and expertise.
It has to be checked whether at national or regional level there exist surveys collecting similar data. Other
universities and organizations also conduct similar studies, and it is important to research what is being
available - there is no need to duplicate efforts collecting the same type of data or designing a new
questionnaire where good examples exist elsewhere. The questionnaire provided in Annex A can be used
as a template for institutional career-tracking surveys, to be adapted to the particularities of an individual
institutional context and the target population.
As far as the type of survey of doctorate graduates to be conducted, universities can consider several
options:
— cross-sectional retrospective studies that trace back careers over several years,
— cohort studies;
— longitudinal panel study;
— cross-sectional retrospective study composed of consecutive cohorts.
If the university already has available data/registers, it may influence the choice of the type of study and
methodology.
Longitudinal surveys, where a sample of doctorate graduates is traced at several moments in time (e.g. at
graduation, 1 and 3 or more years after graduation) allow dedicated questionnaires to be developed for
the various stages; e.g., a questionnaire on satisfaction with doctoral training at graduation, questions on
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the entry into the labour market at 1 year after completing the doctorate, and questions on occupational
career patterns at 3 or more years after completing the doctorate, etc.
The current template questionnaire is based on the DocEnhance survey targeting early-career doctorate
graduates of up to 5 years after completion, and explores a range of topics such as first employment,
current employment, type of contract, moves across sectors of employment and in and out research,
added value of the doctorate, satisfaction with their doctoral training and employment, match between
their degree and their job, skills match, job satisfaction, etc. Having a sample of doctorate graduates of
e.g. up to 10-15 years of completion would provide richer data, including those with more career history.
The choice of the timeframe in this case should be guided both by the goals and objectives of the career-
tracking study and the availability of the contact database of the doctorate graduates.
The questionnaire topics can vary depending on the objectives for the survey and the target population.
For instance, if your primary goal is to receive feedback on the doctoral training programme (satisfaction
with training, supervision, etc.) then the survey population should mainly include early-career doctorate
graduates. If such a study is conducted immediately after graduation (exit poll), it would be suitable to
ask about the intensions for subsequent study or career aspiration (e.g., intended employment sector,
type of job, involvement or not in research, etc.) If you are interested to study the broader impact of the
doctoral degree on careers of the doctorate holders, also in later career stages, then it would be preferable
to extend the target population to the doctorate graduates of up to 10-15 years after graduation, or to
set-up a longitudinal study that would follow doctorate graduates for 10-15 years following graduation.
In any case, it is advisable to keep the length of the questionnaire reasonable (e.g., questionnaire
completion time should stay under 15-20 minutes), and topics focused on collecting data that is relevant
to the study questions and objectives.
Keeping in mind that career-tracking surveys are labour- and cost-intensive, having several organizations
take part in the study enables economies of scale and offers benefit in terms of exchange on e.g., the
questionnaire design. Having several organizations use the same questionnaire also generates
possibilities for cross-institutional benchmarking using the collected data.
Having the survey set up and carried out online rather than conducted by phone or using paper
questionnaires for instance, has its advantage in terms of cost and time flexibility for the respondents.
6.2 Survey feasibility and management
To assess the feasibility of setting-up a career tracking survey, check if your university has a database of
contacts of dotorate graduates, including their names, valid personal emails, year of graduation and
possibly other details. Without available contact data, it would not be possible to conduct a survey. In this
case, the first step would be to set up such a database, in compliance with GDPR.
Planning is key for a successful career-tracking survey : whether it is done as part of a coordinated effort
with several organizations (as in the case of the DocEnhance survey) or as an institutional initiative,
setting aside enough time and financial resources, and thoroughly planning for the various phases and
professional project management are needed: e.g., questionnaire development and quality assurance,
stakeholder relations (e.g. career services, IT, legal advisors, alumni officers, etc.), dealing with the GDPR
aspects and preparing a data management plan, data cleaning and analysis, report preparation and
dissemination. Having appropriate expertise (in-house or through consultancy) in survey design and
statistical analysis and software as well as coordination and management are important.
In the framework of the EU-funded project, the timeline was agreed in advance and partners were
informed of their involvement in each work package. From the needs assessment to the publication of
the final report on the data findings, it took 18 months.
An example of the main steps of a survey is shown in Figure 1.
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Figure 1 — Example on a career-tracking survey timeline
A career-tracking survey should include:
1) Study purpose definition and reviewing the needs of the participating organizations (if several
organizations are involved);
2) Designing the questionnaire and coordination of partners’, stakeholders’ and experts’ feedback
collection;
3) Designing the survey protocol;
4) Setting up and testing the survey in an online platform;
5) Coordinating data collection;
6) Performing data cleaning and data analysis;
7) Preparation of the report with findings.
6.3 Sampling and response rates
The DocEnhance survey aimed to collect data from all doctorate holders in the target population and
therefore used a census-like approach without any specific statistical sampling. This approach has an
advantage of obtaining information from a larger number of respondents and the absence of statistical
and technical issues related to sample selection.
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Having a good response rate is reportedly one of the biggest issues when it comes to career-tracking
surveys of doctorate graduates.
To reach a good response rate, the following recommendations can be provided:
1) Provide good rationale for the survey so that respondents understand the importance of the study
for the university in the survey introduction message.
2) Have the invitation message signed by a representative of the University (e.g., Graduate School) and
build on the doctorate graduate’s relationship with the university.
3) Provide up to 2-3 reminders, one or two weeks after survey launch.
4) Keep the survey open for a period of up to 4 weeks, have a final reminder before the survey closes to
engage respondents and provide the possibility to start and continue filling out the survey later.
5) Provide clear indication of the time it will take to fill out the survey (15-20 minutes maximum).
6) Provide clear indication on the GDPR aspects (e.g., how personal data will be handled).
7) Offer incentives - e.g., offering to send out survey report to respondents.
6.4 Questionnaire
The DocEnhance questionnaire was developed by the European Science Foundation (ESF), the partner
organisation responsible for the DocEnhance Career-tracking Survey and built on the questionnaire used
in the ESF Career-tracking study conducted in 2017. The questionnaire was further developed to adapt
to various career paths of the doctorate working in and outside the academia and to explore the aspects
related to the skills training. The list of skills (both research and academic skills and groups of broader
transferable skills) was enlarged and clustered based on results of the DocEnhance project activities (e.g.,
skills prioritisation workshops, brainstorming and group work at the project kick-off meeting) as well as
relevant literature, i.e., the ESF Member Organizations Forum report “Research Careers in Europe –
Landscapes and Horizons” (ESF, 2009 [8]) as well as the OECD survey “Careers of Doctorate Holders”
(Auriol et al., 2013 [9]).
The questionnaire is in English and includes seven sections: 1) doctorate education, 2) skills and
competencies, 3) transition from doctorate to the first or next employment, 4) employment situation and
related career experience, 5) intersectoral mobility, 6) geographical mobility and 7) demographics.
Several early drafts of the questionnaire were reviewed by the representatives of the DocEnhance
partner organizations. In addition, several international experts and representatives of stakeholder
organizations (e.g., EUA-CDE, EURODOC, etc.) provided their valuable feedback on the questionnaire.
The online q
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