| June 17, 2016

Survey results: Geography

Survey results: Geography

BY: Nichole Austin

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Thanks to everyone who completed our recent survey on geography! We asked about geographic preferences and relocation, and we received some great feedback – results are summarized below.

(Shameless plug: If you haven’t seen our latest survey on equity, check it out here!)

Most of our respondents were PhD grads (25% were students). Half of all respondents currently resided within their home country but outside of their home province/state; the remaining individuals were evenly split between those residing within their home province/state and those residing outside of their home country.

The majority of our respondents (67%) had relocated for their present position, and almost everyone (92%) said they would be willing to relocate for a future employment opportunity. Most were open to relocating pretty much anywhere – including internationally – but a small percentage (18%) specifically wanted to remain in-country.

Even among those willing to move virtually anywhere for work, certain conditions were important – particularly school systems, political environment, cost of living, and proximity to family. Quality of life was a recurring theme, especially for respondents with children: many aimed to strike a balance between employment and environment, with some willing to accept a lower salary to live in an area with a potentially higher quality of life. Many respondents noted the need to be extremely flexible when seeking employment in the academic sector: some of our grads told us that they prioritized location over academic jobs, while others did the opposite and ended up living outside of their preferred area.

These results reflect a clear trade-off between geographic preferences and employment prospects, particularly for academic positions. Do you have more to add, or any general thoughts/comments? Talk to us below!

Thanks to everyone who completed our recent survey on geography! We asked about geographic preferences and relocation, and we received some great feedback – results are summarized below.

(Shameless plug: If you haven’t seen our latest survey on equity, check it out here!)

Most of our respondents were PhD grads (25% were students). Half of all respondents currently resided within their home country but outside of their home province/state; the remaining individuals were evenly split between those residing within their home province/state and those residing outside of their home country.

The majority of our respondents (67%) had relocated for their present position, and almost everyone (92%) said they would be willing to relocate for a future employment opportunity. Most were open to relocating pretty much anywhere – including internationally – but a small percentage (18%) specifically wanted to remain in-country.

Even among those willing to move virtually anywhere for work, certain conditions were important – particularly school systems, political environment, cost of living, and proximity to family. Quality of life was a recurring theme, especially for respondents with children: many aimed to strike a balance between employment and environment, with some willing to accept a lower salary to live in an area with a potentially higher quality of life. Many respondents noted the need to be extremely flexible when seeking employment in the academic sector: some of our grads told us that they prioritized location over academic jobs, while others did the opposite and ended up living outside of their preferred area.

These results reflect a clear trade-off between geographic preferences and employment prospects, particularly for academic positions. Do you have more to add, or any general thoughts/comments? Talk to us below!

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  • Julia M. WrightJune 18, 2016

    What was the sample size & margin of error? I don’t doubt the general trends–these were the same inclinations my cohort had in grad school twenty years ago–but I’d like some context for the numbers.

    • Nichole AustinJune 19, 2016

      Great question! These are informal surveys/web polls (and they’re completely separate from our central analyses, which are based on a sample size of ~2,400). We only had 12 respondents for the geography survey, which was below average and clearly too small to serve as a representative sample. We noted issues surrounding poll sample size, representativeness, and self-selection in a previous post, but this is a very good reminder to consistently emphasize these points moving forward – apologies for this oversight.

      While it would be great to collect a large amount of data through these polls, their primary purpose is to supplement our primary data and dig a little deeper into questions that are difficult to explore when we rely solely on publicly available data. We’re not running any formal tests (beyond calculating simple proportions) with our poll data; the confidence intervals/margins of error associated with these tests would be very wide, so we’re sticking with basic descriptive summaries. Thank you for your feedback!