Relevance of Postdoc to 1995 Principal Job
Those individuals who had held a postdoc but were not on a postdoc appointment in April 1995 were asked to rate the relevance of their most recent postdoc to the work on their 1995 principal job. Table 29 shows the proportion who said the aspects of their most recent postdoc were “a great deal” or “somewhat” relevant to their job.
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“General approach or problem solving skills” was rated relevant by 90 percent of the doctorates. “Subject matter knowledge or expertise” was relevant for 85 percent, followed by “contacts established with colleagues in your field” at 80 percent and “use of specific skills or techniques” at 73 percent. “Use of specialized equipment” was considered relevant by the smallest proportion, 58 percent.
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Even for doctorates graduating more than 25 years earlier and presumably furthest removed from the postdoc experience, all aspects were considered relevant to the 1995 job by at least 50 percent.
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Even though a relatively small proportion of psychology doctorates ever held postdocs (25 percent), they rated all aspects of the postdoc (except use of equipment) relevant as or more frequently than doctorates in any of the other selected fields.
