Migration Patterns of U.S.-Trained Doctorate-Holders

• Activity Number: 607
• Type: Topic Contributed
• Date/Time: Thursday, August 2, 2012 : 8:30 AM to 10:20 AM
• Sponsor: Section on Survey Research Methods
• Author(s): Wan-Ying Chang*+ and Lance Selfa and Michael Sinclair and Lynn Milan
• Companies: National Science Foundation and NORC and NORC and National Science Foundation
• Keywords: doctorate graduates ; international mobility ; missing data ; Markov transition model

Abstract

The Survey of Doctorate Recipients (SDR) is a longitudinal survey of U.S.-trained doctorates in science, engineering, and health, which provides key information on their employment and demographic characteristics. With the recent addition of the international component, the SDR is able to include participants regardless of the location of their residency. This feature enables comparative studies of recent doctoral graduates between those who reside in the U.S. and those who seek employment abroad. It also provides data for studying their international mobility. A better understanding of the migration patterns has important policy implications and may improve the design and administration of such a worldwide program. We apply a Markov transitional model to analyze the longitudinal location data and assess the influence of post-graduation plan, country of origin, field of study, and past locations on the current location of residency. This model also links together the probability of transition between locations and the probability of missing observations due to dropout, locating problem, and nonresponse. We derive summary measures of the international migration patterns.