National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1093/biosci/biaa072.].

There has been great growth in women's participation in the US academic doctoral workforce, but underrepresentation remains in all science and engineering fields, especially at high academic ranks. We obtained estimates of the numbers of professorial women and men in fields likely to seek funding from the National Science Foundation and aligned those numbers with each of six research directorates to investigate temporal trends in submission patterns. We found that women are as likely to be funded as men, but the percentage of women submitting proposals was less than expected in every field but engineering. Women are as likely as men to be employed at the most research active institutions, but women are less likely than men to self-report research as their primary work activity in almost all fields but engineering. This work imbalance ultimately limits the diversity of basic science research ideas in science and engineering.

The Survey of Graduate Students and Postdoctorates in Science and Engineering is an annual census of U.S. academic institutions granting research-based postsecondary degrees in science, engineering, and health fields. Sponsored by the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics within th e National Science Foundation and by the National Institutes of Health, the survey underwent a major redesign in 2017 with the goal of improving data quality while simultaneously reducing reporting burden. The key elements of the redesign effort included the use of digital file transfers for data reporting, separate collection by degree level (master’s and doctoral) of data for graduate students, and the move to a more common coding scheme to describe academic disciplines. The major challenges of this data collection involve the voluntary participation of respondents, the complexity in providing the requested data, variability in the availability of administrative records, and differences in the reporting capabilities of responding institutions. This paper focuses on these challenges and how they were addressed in the redesign process. Results from a 2016 pilot data collection as well as preliminary results of a 2017 data collection are presented to illustrate the impact of the redesign on data quality and respondent burden.

Data from the 2011 to 2013 California Health Interview Survey (CHIS) were pooled to estimate prevalence of mental health need (serious psychological distress and impairment in one or more life domains), minimally adequate treatment (having four or more visits with a health professional in the past 12 months and use of prescription medication for mental health problems in the past 12 months), and suicide ideation among veterans living in California. Numbers and percentages were weighted to the CA population using a large sample size (N=6,952), and for comparison purposes, veterans and nonveterans were standardized to the age and gender distribution of veterans in the sample. Although differences in mental health need were similar between veterans and nonveterans after adjustment, over three-quarters of veterans did not receive minimally adequate treatment needed to address their mental health needs. Suicide ideation was significantly higher among veterans than nonveterans. Male veterans at all ages were more vulnerable to thinking about suicide compared to their nonveteran counterparts.