Going Longitudinal: Proposed Follow-up of a 1983 Data Set

• In Event: Innovations in Methods and Theory

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to look back 35 years, and then forward to explore the potential in a follow up study of the 1221 respondents (1006) native born Americans) in a 1983 comparative sample of Physics, Chemistry, Economics and Sociology undergraduate and graduate students studying in eight of the best ranked departments of their fields located in the Northeastern US. I was co-principal investigator, the project was funded by NSF. The study was my idea, growing out of my dissertation, which was a comparative study of the faculty in 15 of the best ranked departments of this region of the USA. One of the things that makes the student study unique is that it was a gender stratified sample. In short, there are approximately equal number of males and female coming out of the same departments at about the same time and thus into the same job market.

I propose a session of about an hour be devoted to a half hour of laying out the rationale,research question, cognitive and social variables list, measures and sample characteristics of the original study. The second half hour would be a) an open ended discussion with the audience members of what might be learned from a followup study or b) Panelists from Sociology, Psychology and either History or Anthropology offering their perspectives on what the intellectual and policy yield of the proposed followup study might be.

Author

• John McCamy Wilkes, WPI/retired professor