FAQ

NACAPS stands for National Academics Panel Study and is a new longitudinal study by the German Center for Higher Education Research and Science Studies (DZHW). At regular intervals, doctoral candidates and later doctoral graduates are asked about their doctoral conditions and successes, career goals, opportunities and decisions as well as their general life situation.

Osnabrück University is participating in the study as a cooperation partner in order to document the situation of doctoral students and, based on this, to be able to initiate meaningful improvements in education conditions.

You can find the DZHW project homepage  here.

Sharing your experiences will help us shape future decisions. The results can not only be used by researchers, but will also help those responsible at universities and in politics to make evidence-based decisions. Osnabrück University strives to review its existing offers and programs for doctoral candidates for their effectiveness in order to improve the conditions for doctoral studies in the future and to be able to support young researchers in a more targeted manner.

Your contribution helps to underpin arguments with facts. The working conditions and career paths of early career researchers are the subject of heated public debate. Their answers are evaluated in an open-ended manner and thus represent reliable data that can be used in debates.

Your personal path counts. Whether philosopher or physicist, scholarship holder or research assistant: doctoral studies in Germany and here at Osnabrück University take many forms. In order to reflect this diversity, each and every doctoral candidate is valued.

You reflect on your own career. Use the survey to reflect on your career to date. The results of the study will be published and made available on the DZHW website via a  data portal.

Last but not least: you support a research project. As a doctoral candidate, you will conduct your own research. NACAPS is a university and science research project aimed directly at the scientific community. We look forward to your participation!

In February 2019, the NACAPS study was launched nationwide with an initial survey. Since then, doctoral candidates have been invited to take part in the survey every two years. Osnabrück University, as a partner university of the project, will send a personal link by email to all doctoral candidates at the university who are officially registered as doctoral candidates by December 1 of the previous year, with which they can participate in the online survey. In order to draw attention to the project in advance, an announcement of the survey will be sent out approximately one week before the start of the survey.

You will need 20 to 30 minutes to complete the online questionnaire. You will mainly be asked about your current doctoral conditions as well as your career and life goals. We would be delighted if you would also take part in the follow-up surveys that follow each year, which would provide us with a longitudinal perspective on the careers and life paths of doctoral candidates. Importantly, you will only be invited to participate in the follow-up surveys if you give your consent after completing the initial survey.

After the initial survey administered by Osnabrück University, the recruited participants are invited by the DZHW once a year for a follow-up survey in order to obtain information on the course of the doctorate, the degree and further career steps. The aim is currently to observe participants for up to 15 years after completing their doctorate. The DZHW conducts these follow-up surveys independently.

Yes! Your content data will be stored in a protected area on the DZHW's internal servers. If you provide the DZHW with your contact details at the end of the initial survey, these will be stored in a separate and protected area from the survey data. The DZHW only needs these in order to be able to invite you to follow-up surveys.

You will be invited to the initial survey by the Teaching Evaluation Service Center at Osnabrück University. The necessary contact details are also stored on a server of the Teaching Evaluation Service Center in a protected area that is only accessible to the staff of the Teaching Evaluation Service Center.

Address data may only be transmitted and used within the university and, if applicable, to contractual cooperation partners if this serves the fulfillment of scientific tasks and / or the fulfillment of the tasks of the university (see  data processing regulations of Osnabrück University). Both conditions are fulfilled in the NACAPS project:

1. The NACAPS project is part of a nationwide scientific research project funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (in German: Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung, BMBF), in which around 50 German universities are involved under the coordination of the DZHW. As part of the project, the DZHW is compiling a comprehensive data set (Scientific Use File) containing the details of all doctoral students at the institutions involved in the project and is evaluating the data exclusively for scientific purposes in the context of university and doctoral research.
2. The results of the study are to be used for the purpose of research and quality assurance of teaching and studies within the universities (i.e. also within Osnabrück University). The stored address data will be used exclusively for the purpose of inviting participants to take part in the NACAPS project. The address data is processed exclusively by employees of the university (specifically the employees of the Teaching Evaluation Service Center). All employees who have access to personal data as part of the project are subject to the applicable data protection law. The disclosure of address data to third parties is strictly prohibited, even if the employees no longer work at the university (Osnabrück University).

Participants also receive an invitation to take part after completing their Doctorate in order to follow up on their career paths. In the initial survey, participants are asked to submit their contact details to the DZHW for the follow-up surveys. If the respondent agrees and is willing to be interviewed further, they will continue to be contacted by the DZHW to participate in annual follow-up surveys. The DZHW conducts these follow-up surveys independently. The DZHW is also responsible for maintaining and researching the contact data.

A current list of cooperation partners can be found on the  DZHW website.

The data on early career researchers collected as part of the Nacaps project is available to the following user groups for the following purposes:

1. Primary researchers of the Nacaps project at the DZHW for writing scientific publications and for the purpose of educational reporting,
2. Secondary researchers via a (factually anonymized) Scientific Use File (SUF) and students via an (absolutely anonymized) Campus Use File (CUF) via the Research Data Center (FDZ) of the DZHW for the purpose of their own scientific analyses and publications,
3. the cooperating universities for the purpose of university management and reporting as well as internal quality management,
4. via the Nacaps data portal to an interested public for the purpose of up-to-date information on the situation of young researchers in Germany.

Detailed information can be found in the DZHW's  data protection guidelines.

1. Data stored by the Teaching Evaluation Service Center at Osnabrück University for the purpose of inviting doctoral candidates to take part in the initial survey: To send the invitation to the initial survey, the name and email address (or, if this is not available, the postal address) are requested from the doctoral candidate database of Osnabrück University and stored on a server of the Teaching Evaluation Service Center in a password-protected container (VeraCrypt). By necessity, there is no anonymization at this point. The data will not be passed on to third parties and will only be used to make initial contact as part of the doctoral student survey. At the end of the field phase, this contact data is no longer required and is deleted.
   In order to be able to create a description of the population, the following additional characteristics are requested from the doctoral candidate database of Osnabrück University and aggregated into (anonymized) statistics:
   
   - Year of birth
   - Gender
   - Nationality
   - Doctoral subject
   - Year of admission to the doctorate
   
   This data is also password-protected and stored on a server of the Teaching Evaluation Service (VeraCrypt, see above) and deleted after the field phase. Only the data aggregated into statistics (anonymized) is stored permanently in order to be able to compare the survey cohorts with regard to demographic characteristics. Only the employees of the Teaching Evaluation Service Center have access to the data.
2. Data stored at the DZHW as part of the survey(s): Data is collected using the DZHW's own online survey system "ZOFAR", which adheres to high data protection standards in accordance with European and German guidelines. Detailed information can be found in the  DZHW's data protection guidelines.

In accordance with applicable law, respondents will be informed upon request whether and which data about them is stored at the DZHW or the Teaching Evaluation Service Center of Osnabrück University.

As soon as a respondent actively revokes further participation in NACAPS surveys ("revocation for the future"), there is no longer any need to store the contact data provided by him/her and the contact data will be irrevocably deleted immediately. In the event of a retroactive revocation, both the currently available contact data and all details of the respondent(s) will be deleted from the (panel) data set. However, as soon as the NACAPS data has already been processed, e.g. in the form of a report for educational monitoring or a scientific publication, it is no longer possible to change the data basis used for this purpose, as otherwise scientific results can no longer be reproduced.

Contact at Osnabrück University (Teaching Evaluation Service Center): Jennifer Molitor (+49(0)541/969-7732,  email)

Contact person at the DZHW (regarding questions on data protection): Martin Fuchs ( email)

Jennifer Molitor (+49(0)541/969-7732,  email), member of the Teaching Evaluation Service Center, will be happy to answer any further questions you may have about the doctoral student survey at Osnabrück University.

You can also find further information on the  DZHW website.