VR survey to clinical researchers and PhD students

This survey about prerequisites for clinical research is a significant part of the ALF evaluation and was sent out by the Swedish Research Council (VR) in 2 steps. The results of the survey have been compiled by VR and the report was in time for the Panel 3 hearing 10th October 2022.

Sending out the survey

This survey was sent out in 2 steps:

1. An email notification was sent to all clinical researchers and doctoral students (about 3,000 people) to whom KI and Region Stockholm had jointly provided VR with email addresses (see below). The recipients were asked to verify that they are a person who meets the criteria for step 2 of the survey concerning conditions for their research activities.

2. VR sent out the second survey on 7 March 2022 to a sample of respondents to the survey 1 (different surveys to researchers and doctoral students)

Compilation response rate of survey 1 & 2

Below is a summary from VR of the number of people who received and responded to the surveys.

1 and 2
Region Respondents (quantity) Response rate survey 1 (%) Response rate survey 2 (%) Respondents to survey 2 (number)
Researcher PhD Researcher PhD Researcher PhD Researcher PhD
Skåne 784 651 61 48 79 66 256 109
Stockholm 1620 1430 68 56 78 71 393 166
Uppsala 727 545 79 65 84 76 295 129
Västerbotten 406 194 76 72 83 71 181 60
Västra Götaland 1447 532 62 56 75 64 319 96
Örebro 339 168 60 70 77 79 111 61
Östergötland 383 263 68 57 81 66 157 65
Total 5706 3783 67,7 60,6 80 70,4 1712 686

List of clinical researchers and doctoral students

The list of researchers was extracted from KI's bibliometric database.

  • The list includes:
    • people who had verified publications between 2016-2020 in the system,  
    • people listed in the staff catalogues for KI and Region Stockholm (IDAC and EK), or only Region Stockholm as of 21st May 2021.
    • registered doctoral students regardless of the number of their publications.
  • People who had 5 publications or fewer during the period are excluded from the list.


The list of doctoral students was extracted from Ladok by selecting all doctoral students with at least 1% activity during the 2021 Spring semester within the research areas clinical medicine or health sciences, irrespective if they have reported employment as healthcare professional or not. 

Doctoral students within other research areas who reported employment as a doctor or other healthcare professional (nurse, midwife, speech therapist, physiotherapist) in a clinical setting with time allocated to pursue doctoral education within the employment) were also added to the list to include all doctoral students in a clinical environment.

Email addresses of doctoral students are retrieved from KI's staff catalogue IDAC.

VR survey (pdf)