Postgraduate Research Experience Survey (PRES) 2011 - Higher ...

PRES 2011 Results – September 2011
area aiming to contribute to an understanding of students’ motivations, aspirations, what they consider
important and unimportant, and what they think of their current provision.
In the following sections, 3.2.1 to 3.2.3, the items in PRES relating to motivations, career aspirations, skills
and professional development are broken down by particular variables: discipline, gender, age, and
source of funding 22 . The analyses are of necessity only snapshots of particular groups of postgraduate
researchers’ perceptions of their skills and professional development, but they suggest that there are
differences between demographic groups that it may be useful for institutions to explore further, using
their own results and through other methods (such as focus groups) in order to establish effective ways of
engaging researchers in skills and professional development training and to continue to promote the
Roberts agenda.
3.2.1 Motivations and career aspirations
As with previous years of PRES, across the whole sample interest in the subject was the most commonly
selected main motivation for pursuing a research degree (36.9%) followed by improving career prospects
for an academic/research career (30.5%).
Figure 3.7: The main motivation for me pursuing a research degree programme was..., Q19
Regarding anticipated career, 57.7% of respondents said that they anticipated a career in higher
education (44.3% teaching only and/or teaching and research, and 13.4% research only). It is notable that
42.3% did not have a career in HE in mind given the presumption commonly made that PhD students
overwhelmingly intend to enter academic careers. It is also interesting to compare the 44.3% of PRES
respondents who were intending to have a career as lecturers with research from Vitae that suggested
only 14% of doctoral graduates from the period 2003-2007 have actually gone on to hold that post 23 .
22 A general rule of thumb has been adopted in which a difference of 5% between respondents of different types
who agree (agree + strongly agree) with each item is considered to be of potential practical significance and has
been explored. Where the word ‘significant’ is used in the following text this is to indicate practical significance in
that sense, unless otherwise indicated, rather than statistical significance.
23 See Vitae (2009).
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