Where could I find some geographical statistics about Ph.D.s?
November 20, 2010 1:42 PM   Subscribe

Where could I find statistical information about the number of Ph.D. holders from a specific geographical area?

Hello MeFites,

Where could I find any information about how many people from Southwest Virginia hold PhDs in the sciences?

Specifically, I'm wondering:

1. What percentage of the population native to SW Va. holds a Ph.D.?
- Any Ph.D
- A sciences Ph.D.
- Biological/biomedical sciences Ph.D.
- Or any postbaccalaureate sciences degree?

2. What percentage of the current population of SW Va holds a Ph.D. (or same caveats as above)? A breakdown of men/women would also be useful.

3. What percentage of SW Va. women have a Ph.D. in the biomedical/biological sciences (or Ph.D. at all)?

Thanks, Hive!
posted by AAAAAThatsFiveAs to Education (5 answers total)
 
Best answer: Muck about with the census tools. You can do a county-by-county search of the region you're interested in. As far as I can tell they don't break it down by subject matter, but you'll at least get a count of graduate degrees.

Sort of. You're talking about really small numbers of people. Something like 2.7% of Russel County, Virginia has a graduate or professional degree with a margin of error of +/1 1.3%. So the margin of error, as I understand it, is potentially something like 50% of the number of people with said degrees. So they're saying about 550 people plus or minus 250.

Tl;dr: there may not be a good source of information for this, but the number is going to be really, really small.
posted by valkyryn at 2:02 PM on November 20, 2010


Best answer: You might be able to get most of (2) from the Census Bureau, but not broken down by field.

Maybe NSF's Survey of Earned Doctorates.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 2:08 PM on November 20, 2010


Best answer: What percentage of the population native to SW Va. holds a Ph.D.?

Do you mean to include people who grew up there but have moved away? I think this would be nearly impossible. I agree with valkyryn; census data is your best bet.
posted by desjardins at 2:44 PM on November 20, 2010


Best answer: Here's the 2007-2008 Survey of Earned Doctorates questionnaire. Question C5 asks for the state of birth, and question C9 asks for the state of the last high school attended. Here's a list of tables from that survey. I can't see any that use the data from those questions but I'm not looking too hard. But the SED isn't going to give you data below the state level, because they don't collect it.
posted by madcaptenor at 3:05 PM on November 20, 2010


Response by poster: Thanks for the great answers, all.
posted by AAAAAThatsFiveAs at 3:30 PM on November 26, 2010


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