Jessica Kohout and Marlene Wicherski
APA Research Office

June 1999

Table of Contents

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Acknowledgements

Methodology

Demographic Characteristics

Employment Status

Employment Patterns

Employment Settings

Job Satisfaction

Postdoctoral Study

Sources and Levels of Support for Doctoral Study

Patterns and Levels of Debt

Salaries of New Doctorates by Positions and Settings

References

Appendix:  1997 Doctorate Employment Survey Instrument

List of Tables

Acknowledgements

1997 Doctorate Employment Survey

     The Doctorate Employment Survey (DES) was conducted on an annual basis between 1975 and 1985. Beginning in 1987, the decision was made to move the survey to a biennial schedule. The data on which this report is based were collected in 1998 from the 1997 doctorate recipients in psychology.

Methodology

     The questionnaire was mailed to each of the doctorate recipients in March 1998 (The appendix of this report contains a copy of the questionnaire.). Of the 4,080 survey recipients, 34 indicated that they had not received their doctorates in the 1996-97 academic year. Another 131 (3.2%) were returned as undeliverable. Nonrespondents were sent reminder postcards in early April 1998 and a complete set of materials was sent May 8, 1998 to those who still had not responded.

     A total of 2,116 useable questionnaires were returned, yielding an overall response rate of 51.9%. Response rates differed only slightly based on the type of doctorate awarded; approximately 54.3% of PhDs, 53.5% of PsyDs, and 50% of EdDs responded. The level of participation increased slightly from 1995 when it was 48% overall.

Demographic Characteristics

Sex
     Table 1 indicates that 69% of responding new doctorates were women, an increase of 17 percentage points in 16 years (In 1981, the proportion of women among graduates was 52%). As in other science and engineering fields, women have been entering psychology in increasing numbers over the past several decades. At the same time, the numbers of men in psychology have been decreasing slightly. The representation of women among DES respondents is only slightly higher than the 67% reported for new doctorates by the National Science Foundation (NSF) in 1997.

Ethnicity
     Just over 85% of respondents were white. Hispanics and Asians each comprised about 4% of the new doctorates, and just fewer than 4% were African Americans. Native American s and "other" each represented less than 1% of the sample, as did those who specified multiple race/ethnicity. Of the 93 respondents who identified themselves as Hispanic, 29% were of Mexican heritage, 23% were Puerto Rican, 44% were from a different Hispanic group and approximately 4% did not specify. Over the past decade the proportion of ethnic minority doctorate recipients has edged up from almost 7% in the 1985 survey to about 14% in 1997.

Age
     Fifty - six percent of the respondents were younger than 35, with an additional 35% between 35 and 44 years of age. Fourteen percent were 45 to 59 years old and less than one percent was 60 years or older. The average age of respondents was 34.7 roughly equal to the mean ages for recent years. The median age at doctorate was 33 which is comparable to the median age at doctorate (32.6) reported by the NSF for new PhDs in 1997.

Degree Type
     Almost 78% of the respondents earned a PhD, and just over one fifth of the new doctorates received the PsyD in 1997 (compared to 8% in 1985), while just under 2% earned the EdD. Table 2 depicts additional data on educational characteristics of new doctorates.

Employment Status

     Most respondents (69%) were employed in their current primary position within 3 months of completing the degree. Twenty-nine percent of these new doctorates found employment before completion, while 34% found work within three months of completion, and only (6%) had the job when they started the program. Comparisons of the amount of time to find human service positions versus other types of positions, presented in Table 5, showed that the new doctorates in non-health-service provider positions appeared to take somewhat longer to find work than did those in the health service areas. Specifically, proportions taking 6 months or more to find work were substantively higher in research fields than those graduating in the practice fields

     Men were more likely than women to be employed full time (78% vs. 64%), while a larger proportion of women were employed part time (14% vs. 6%). When asked for a reason for choosing part-time employment, family responsibilities were cited almost exclusively by women (97% vs. 3%).

     Minorities and whites reported full-time employment at comparable levels (68%). The highest rate of postdoctoral study was reported by Native American s (32%), but the number on which this percentage is based is very small. Asians reported the second highest rate at 21%, and again the numbers on which these percentages are based are rather low. This year the percentage of Hispanic respondents reporting postdoctoral study remained steady at 17%, compared to 4% in 1986, 7% in 1991 and 19% in 1995. The proportions with full-time employment have declined steadily over the decade across all racial/ethnic groups.

     Although unemployment remains low among new psychologists, the proportion of new doctorates that were unemployed and seeking employment (2.5%) has risen slowly from 1.6% in 1985. Less than 2% reported being unemployed but not seeking employment. Most of this group (58%) cited home/child care responsibilities for their decision, and a clear majority of responses to this question came from women (88%).

Subfield of Degree
     Table 2 presents the employment status for graduates of the various types of doctoral programs. The rate of full-time employment differed slightly for graduates from health service provider and research subfields, with graduates from the research subfields more likely to report full-time employment (72% and 67%, respectively). Differences were also found in rates of part-time employment, with the health service provider subfields reporting greater rates of part-time employment than those in the research subfields (14% vs. 7%, respectively), and the reverse in postdoctoral training, (17% research vs. 14% health service provider subfields).

     In spite of the overall growth in postdoctorates across psychology, clear contrasts emerge when programs focussing on the biological basis of behavior (e.g., physiological and neuroscience) are examined separately from other research psychology fields (e.g., developmental and social). The postdoctoral fellowship could be called a "necessary" step for the biologically based areas. Seventy percent of respondents in these subfields were engaged in postdoctoral study, compared to only 15% in the remaining research fields. This represents a pronounced growth in the need for postdoctoral training, especially for graduates in the bio-based cluster, where the proportion in such training was at 41% in 1986 and 49% in 1991.

     Across all subfields the level of unemployment was minimal, with little difference between psychologists trained to deliver health services and those in research specialties. Very small numbers impede detailed interfield comparisons.

Perceptions of the Job Market
     Data on job market perceptions appeared to be somewhat skewed in 1996 due to the placement of this question among those to be completed only by those who were employed. Responses were far more positive than they had been when all respondents answered this item. For this reason, the data from 1996 were not compared with those from earlier years. In 1997, the question was returned to that section of the questionnaire to be answered by all respondents. The results were not as expected. Responses remained on an upswing. Just over one third of the respondents reported a "good" or "excellent" perception of the job market. This is an increase of almost 13 percentage points from 1995 but is still far less than the 52% who reported such perceptions in 1989. It may be that the decrease in perceptions in the early 1990s was the result of a combination of a sagging economy and beginning structural shifts in both practice and academe which have resulted in less autonomy and greater uncertainty for psychologists regardless of setting and training. The "improvement" in perceptions may be due more to perceived improvements in the general economy than to any improvement in the actual practice or academic milieus for psychologists, both of which still appear to be in flux. Not surprisingly, perceptions varied by employment status, with those employed full time more apt to respond positively. Percentages responding positively tend to decrease as one moves from full time to part time to postdoctorate to unemployed and seeking. The group that was unemployed and not seeking responded similarly to those who were employed full time.