This post was written by Dr. Regina Becker and Dr. Harry Williams, coordinators of the Working Group “WG1 PostDoc Survey”.

We are immensely pleased to announce that, after several months of data analysis and report writing, we can finally release the report following the 2nd Leibniz PostDoc survey.

The report can be downloaded here: https://tinyurl.com/lpn2024. If you would like to know more, keep reading!

What was the 2nd Leibniz PostDoc survey about?

Postdoctoral researchers are absolutely crucial to the operation of many research institutes. In spite of this, postdocs are often referred to as this homogeneous group of “early-to-mid-career” researchers, and this is simply not the case. Indeed, we know from the first Leibniz PostDoc survey that Leibniz PostDocs are a diverse group of researchers with distinct needs fulfilling a breadth of roles within Leibniz Institutes.

Whereas in the first Leibniz PostDoc survey, we wanted to better understand these needs and wants, we have sought to go beyond this in the second Leibniz PostDoc survey. The principal aim being: we wanted to understand in detail some of the more challenging aspects of being a postdoctoral researcher highlighted in the report of the first Leibniz PostDoc survey.

This data should then allow us to more specifically identify areas for development that the Leibniz Association, Leibniz PostDoc Network, and Leibniz Institutes should address together to improve the experiences of Leibniz PostDocs.

Who responded to the second Leibniz PostDoc survey?

In total, 510 respondents from all Leibniz Sections completed the second Leibniz PostDoc survey. Although the exact number of Leibniz PostDocs is unknown (largely because no one can really agree on a formal definition for what constitutes a ‘postdoc’), estimates suggest the respondents to the survey represent around 20%.

What are the key findings and recommendations?

The Leibniz PostDoc survey is a massive project. However, in the final report, we summarised key findings in four key areas, which are: (1) working conditions, (2) mental health, (3) information transparency, and (4) career planning.

For each of these sections, we also provide recommendations of what we – as the Leibniz PostDoc Network – think should or could be next steps for changes in the Leibniz Association or Leibniz Institutes to improve the working lives of postdoctoral researchers.

Working conditions

The first area that we focus on relates to working conditions. Here, we found that while most Leibniz PostDocs surveyed are contracted to work around 40 hours per week, 25% work in excess of 50 hours per week. This included regular weekend work, with slightly more than half of Leibniz PostDocs not receiving any compensation for this additional work. We also found that Leibniz PostDocs, on average, take around 80% of their contractual holiday allowance.

The main reason for this: time. Leibniz PostDocs wear multiple hats, from researcher to teacher and administrator. For us, the important thing is to ensure a healthy balance between these different roles enabling Leibniz PostDocs to develop as professional researchers while not overburdening them. This data would suggest that the current arrangement is certainly not balanced.

It was not entirely surprising therefore to hear that Leibniz PostDocs feel at-best “mixed” about their current working conditions. We unpicked this further by asking Leibniz PostDocs to rank certain elements of their working conditions. Here, the four poorest scoring elements (in terms of overall satisfaction) include: (1) career predictability, (2) job security, (3) opportunities for career advancement, and (4) work-life balance. Thus, a picture begins to emerge of a group of highly-trained professional researchers unable to progress due to a lack of positions and funding, but still subject to the restrictions imposed by the WissZeitVG. We say that this makes for an insecure and unpredictable environment.

Add to this data suggesting that Leibniz PostDocs believe that working in academia causes them to neglect their social life and/or interferes with their partnership and/or family responsibilities. These problems are not new. However, in the second Leibniz PostDoc survey we wanted to find out if the prevailing working conditions were making postdocs think about leaving academia and/or Germany. Indeed, that appears to be the case. Overall, 42% of Leibniz PostDocs surveyed had seriously considered moving abroad in the last 12 months at the time of the second Leibniz PostDoc survey. Strikingly,16% of those considering moving abroad planned to do so permanently.

Mental health

The biggest new addition to the second Leibniz PostDoc survey was a set of questions allowing us to explore the mental health of Leibniz PostDocs. Overall, we found that 22% of Leibniz PostDocs self-reported behaviours associated with moderate-to-severe depression. While this is more than double than the prevalence of depressive symptoms in Germany according to studies by the Robert Koch Institute, it is in-line with similar data looking at the mental health of postdoctoral researchers working within Max Planck institutes. For us, this was quite a striking finding, and the first real insights into the mental health of Leibniz PostDocs working throughout Germany. In the previous section, we highlight that career predictability, job security, and opportunities for career advancement are all ranked poorly by Leibniz PostDocs. We think it entirely reasonable to suggest that these fundamentally unstable elements of a research career are manifesting themselves in PostDocs’ mental health.

Information transparency

Another key part of the second Leibniz PostDoc survey was exploring the information that Leibniz PostDocs have access to at key points of their careers. Here, we started by exploring postdocs’ knowledge of the WissZeitVG (Wissenschaftszeitvertragsgesetz) finding that around 26% Leibniz PostDocs are unaware if their contract is based on the WissZeitVG or not. This is particularly the case for international Leibniz PostDocs, where 38% said they did not know if their contract was based on the WissZeitVG. Unpicking this further, we found that around a third of Leibniz PostDocs did not know how much time they had left to work on a WissZeitVG fixed-term contract either. These numbers are somewhat better than in the first Leibniz PostDoc survey so, while we can see that work to improve awareness of the WissZeitVG has probably had a positive impact, further work is needed.

Beyond this, our data also indicate that there are other key decisions taken at the point of recruitment in a non-transparent and sometimes opaque manner. One example is the determination of a Leibniz PostDocs pay scale (Entgeltgruppe, i.e. E13) and pay scale level (Entgeltstufe, i.e. 1 or 2). This determination should include recognition of previous work experience, where relevant for the position. Despite this, 13% of respondents told us that previous experience was not considered at all. Further to this, we found that around a third of Leibniz PostDocs were not explicitly informed what their Entgeltstufe was before signing their contract. 

Career planning  

Career planning is super important irrespective of career stage! And this is something that the Leibniz Association recognise in their ‘Guidelines on Career Development’, which aim to “create greater employment security for the duration of the qualification phase and transparency surrounding career prospects during and after completion of a doctorate.” Sadly, only 16% of Leibniz PostDocs know that these guidelines exist. Further, only 13% of Leibniz PostDocs know of official career development guidelines at their own institutes. We think this lack of framework is having a real impact on Leibniz PostDocs on-the-ground. For example, Leibniz PostDocs tell us that the criteria for promotion at their Leibniz Institute is neither clear nor transparent.

How do we come to the conclusions above?

The above-mentioned findings are our conclusions that can be drawn based on the collected data. However, in the report we also provide the full results for each survey question organized by sections.

For most survey questions, this includes providing descriptive statistics such as item mean (M) and standard deviation (SD) or by providing distribution information using frequencies in text or graphical plots, i.e., violin and bar plots. We provide an explanation for how to interpret these specific plots in the first couple of pages of the report.

For a limited number of survey questions, we also performed linear regression analyses and information on this is provided in the relevant sections.

Who is responsible for the Leibniz PostDoc survey?

The Leibniz PostDoc survey is now a multi-year project that is run by Working Group (WG) 1 “Survey” of the Leibniz PostDoc Network, which has the following shared goal: collect and provide data on Leibniz PostDocs to get an idea about who Leibniz PostDocs are and how they are doing at their Leibniz Institutes.

Leibniz PostDocs responsible for the development, administration, and preparation of the report of the second survey are the current coordinators, Harry M. Williams (BNITM) and Regina Becker (LIfBi), as well as Lena Roemer (formerly GESIS), Mine Altinli (BNITM), Sabrina Sobieraj (formerly IfADo), Thomas Lösch (DIPF), and Daniela Fiedler (formerly IPN).

What happens to the data from the survey now?

Once the report into the second Leibniz PostDoc survey has been released, we will start working on cleaning up the dataset for publication. Don’t worry, we will make sure that individual respondents cannot be identified! We aim to have the data ready-to-go by the end of 2024, and we will let people know when the data is available.   

What do I do if I have questions about the survey?

If you have any questions concerning the report or would like to have a short presentation (of up to 15 minutes) of the findings and recommendations in your working group or institute, please reach out to the working group co-leaders, Dr. Harry Williams () or Dr. Regina Becker ().