The complete survey universe has been surveyed since fall 1988. From 1984 through 1987, master's-granting institutions were surveyed on a sample basis. Data collection techniques Institutional coordinators were asked to review the departmental listing provided on the Survey Questionnaire, to indicate any changes in their departmental structure such as departments newly formed, phased out, split, or merged, and to check off any departments that had neither graduate students nor postdoctorates and for which Survey Questionnaires would therefore not be submitted. The revised departmental listing forms were returned to the data processing contractor for use as a checklist in tracking departmental responses. A Survey Questionnaire was completed for each department either centrally or at the departmental level and was returned to the data processing contractor for data entry, editing, and tabulation.
Information is collected for the fall of the year in which data collection occurs.
Initial mail-out is in November of the year for which information is requested and collection typically ends in July of the following year. Estimation techniques Missing data for partially nonrespondent departments were imputed using the departments' previous year's data, where available, or data from peer institutions in cases where data had not been reported the previous year. Survey Quality Measures a. Since the 1999 survey was distributed to all institutions on the sample frame, there was no sampling error. At the departmental level coverage should also be quite good, since institutional coordinators would normally be in a position to identify relevant departments.