What do researchers do? Doctoral graduate destinations and impact three years on 2010

Destinations and impact three years on

This new publication provides, for the first time, comprehensive evidence of the value of doctoral study to researchers, their employers and society at large. It identifies six distinct ‘occupational clusters' of doctoral graduates and illustrates how these highly talented individuals contribute to innovation and knowledge transfer through using their knowledge, skills and experience in research and non-research roles across all employment sectors.

It is clear from this study that doctoral study enhances the quality of researchers' lives, increases their capacity to contribute to innovation and to make a real difference in the workplace - whether in academia or beyond.

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Methodology

This appendix sets out key processes in the analysis and interpretation of ‘What do researchers do? Doctoral graduate destinations and impact three years on’, 2010 (WDRD). It also aims to guide those wishing to recreate the analyses with the current or future L DLHE doctoral respondent datasets.
The processes covered include:

• understanding the source data
• survey weighting and data quality
• additional coding
• defining postgraduate researchers and doctoral graduates
• key variables used in the analysis: individual background, study related
• variables and employment
• establishing the occupational clusters
• additional qualitative research

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Career paths

This report builds on the findings of ‘What do researchers do? Doctoral graduate destinations and impact three years on’, which was based on the
enhanced longitudinal destination data available through the L DLHE and introduced a new typology of six occupational clusters to describe doctoral graduate
destinations. This report explores the career pathways of doctoral graduates within and between these clusters three to four years following graduation, their typical occupations and variations by broad discipline groupings.

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