Job Relatedness Measures in NCSES Surveys

Urban Institute, Washington DC

Investigators

Abstract

The National Science Foundation's National Survey of College Graduates (NSCG) regularly collects information on the degree to which a college graduate's work in their principal job is related to their field of study. These data are of considerable interest to researchers and policymakers who are concerned with the adequacy of the science and engineering pipeline and the efficient utilization of science and engineering education. However, following the initial research and testing of job relatedness questions for inclusion in the 1993 NSCG, there has been little research to validate these survey questions or probe how workers conceptualize the relationship between their job and their education. Without this validation of the job relatedness survey questions, it is difficult to interpret the rapidly growing amount of research in this area. This project fills that knowledge gap, providing a much firmer foundation for future research on the science and engineering pipeline. The project generates specific recommendations to the National Science Foundation on possible revisions to future versions of the NSCG. The research also provides broader insights into the data collection of other federal agencies on the relationship between a worker?s education and training and their current job. The project takes a two-pronged, mixed methods approach to understanding how science and engineering graduates understand the relation of their job to their field of study. The first approach is to analyze existing NSCG data to determine the factors and job characteristics that induce a graduate to identify their job as related or unrelated to their field of study. The analysis distinguishes these factors from the factors which cause a graduate to work in a job that is not related to their field of study, such as a weak labor market. The factors that induce a graduate to identify their job as related or unrelated are the most relevant for the validation of the job relatedness measures. Survey data analysis is rarely sufficient for fully understanding social phenomena, so the project also involves interviews with science and engineering graduates employed in a wide range of occupations. These interviews provide richer context for understanding how science and engineering graduates think about the relationship between their education and their work. They explore questions that are not easily inferred from the NSCG, including whether the interview subject?s job expectations were met or the role of the passage of time in respondents? feeling of connection with their field of study.