METHODOLOGY

This study utilizes data extracted from the Doctorate Records File (DRF) available through the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) WebCASPAR database. Records from the DRF are created from responses to the Survey of Earned Doctorates (SED) which is currently collected by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago on behalf of NSF, the National Institutes of health, the U.S. Department of Education, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administrations.

The SED is administered to all recipients of Ph.D. and equivalent degrees in the United States. Response rates have been historically high with 90.8% of doctorate recipients responding to the baccalaureate institutions item in Academic Year (AY) 2000, the most recent year released by NSF.

Consistent definition of the universe of institutions is important to interpretation of weighted ranks across time periods. Changes in the definition of the universe can radically change the numeric ranks of institutions when comparing two time periods. Therefore, to better enable period-to-period comparisons, five time spans are included in this report, all using the same universe of institutions. The time spans for doctorate origins are AY1971-AY1980, AY1976-AY1985, AY1981-AY1990, AY1986-AY1995, and AY1991-AY2000. Be aware, however, that because of such factors as lack of origins, lack of responses, or institutional inception, some differences are known to exist between the time periods studied. (Courtesy of Higher Education Data Sharing Consortium)

The tables within this report show how Earlham ranks compared to 1,302 institutions throughout the country. The tables include information on all disciplines as well as specific disciplines. Definitions of the disciplines are in Appendix B. The tables include comparison data for the GLCA schools as well as Grinnell, Guilford and Macalester (overlap schools).