The University of Rostock is a partner university of the Nacaps study of the German Center for Higher Education Research and Science Studies (DZHW).

Nacaps stands for "National Academics Panel Study" and is a nationwide panel study of doctoral candidates and doctoral graduates.

Nacaps collects detailed information on doctoral conditions and successes, career intentions and career paths, as well as on general living conditions of doctoral candidates and doctoral graduates.

The study is now entering its third round. All doctoral candidates who have registered as new candidate at the University of Rostock between December 2, 2020 and December 1, 2022 will be invited to participate in the survey. 

The 2023 survey was expected to start on February 27, 2023.

7 good reasons for participation:

• Your experiences shape future decisions.
• They help to back up arguments with facts.
• Your personal path counts.
• You reflect on your own career.
• You become part of a unique study.
• You support a research project.
• There will be a thank you.

Your feedback is important for the work of all graduate programs at the University of Rostock in order to be able to support doctoral candidates and postdocs even more specifically on their individual path during and after their doctorate.

What will happen to your data?

With your consent, Nacaps stores your personal contact information in order to contact you for follow-up surveys. This information is stored, separately from your survey information, in a protected area on the in-house servers of the DZHW. The information from the surveys is kept pseudonymous (i.e. without names or address information) for processing. Sensitive information and all open data are specially protected to exclude the possibility of tracing back to individual participants.

More information about data protection at Nacaps is available here.

Who can / should participate?

In February 2023, doctoral candidates who register as new doctoral candidates at the University of Rostock between December 2, 2020 and December 1, 2022 will be invited to participate in the survey. You will receive an invitation with a personal access code for the online questionnaire

If you are not yet registered as a doctoral candidate or if you have already been invited in 2021 but unfortunately were not able to participate in the past, please contact us (gradauni-rostockde). Only through the participation of a broad range of doctoral candidates a complete overview of the doctoral situation can be achieved.

Support this research project with your participation!

Previous Results of the Survey:

The results of the 2019 and 2021 surveys can be found in a publicly available data portal. Additional focus evaluations on topics such as funding, employment, or the health of doctoral candidates, as well as press coverage of the study, can be found at www.nacaps.de.

The results are presented in the portal in the form of indicators. These are grouped into seven themes:

• Working and employment conditions
• Supervision situation
• Type and structure of doctoral studies
• Motives for doctoral studies and course of doctoral studies
• Career paths and perspectives after the doctorate mobility
• Life situation / personal background 

When can we expect the first results of the 2023 survey?

The results are expected to be available from the beginning of 2024.

If you would like to be informed promptly about the publication of study results, we would recommend signing up for the newsletter distribution list of the Nacaps project team. Publications obtained from the survey will also be announced on Twitter, LinkedIn and on the Nacaps website.