National Academics Panel Study NACAPS

• What motivates (post-)doctoral students to pursue an academic career?
• To what extent do these motives change over the course of the Doctorate and further career?
• What career paths do doctoral students take?
• What contribution do early career researchers make to research and teaching?
• (How) Do personal and university conditions affect the success of doctorates?

Scientifically reliable answers to these and other important questions are only available in rudimentary form, if at all, at most German universities, including Osnabrück University. In order to evaluate the situation of doctoral students and to be able to initiate meaningful improvements to training conditions on this basis, Osnabrück University took part in the ProFile doctoral student panel of the German Center for Higher Education Research and Science Studies (in German: DZHW) from 2011 to 2016. After the DZHW discontinued the project at the end of 2016, Osnabrück University is now also participating in the DZHW's successor project  NACAPS (National Academics Panel Study), which was launched in 2019.

The National Academics Panel Study NACAPS is a longitudinal study on doctoral candidates and doctoral graduates. The aim of the project is to collect representative cross-sectional data on the qualification of young academics throughout Germany as well as longitudinal data on the career paths of doctoral candidates within and outside academia in order to answer the questions raised above. NACAPS sees itself as a study by science, about science and for science.