VR survey for clinical researchers and PhD students
This survey is a significant part of the ALF evaluation and is sent out by the Swedish Research Council (VR) in 2 steps. It is important that as many people as possible answer the survey, in order to provide as accurate an understanding as possible of the conditions for clinical research.

More information about the survey is provided below for clinical researchers, doctoral students and other recipients.
Step 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.
- 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.
- The survey response was to be submitted by February 14th.
- After closure of the survey VR informed that the response rate for ALF region Stockholm was 68% of researchers and 56% of doctoral students.
Step 2
- VR sent out questionnaire 2 on 7 March to a sample of respondents to survey 1. The sample of researchers was stratified on the variable academic title, i.e. if the respondents have a PhD, are docents or professors, after those who responded that they do not consider themselves to be researchers were removed. For the survey for the doctoral students, VR did not do any stratification, but made a randomized selection, after those who answered that they do not consider themselves doctoral students were removed.
- VR does not provide information about who received survey 2 since the answers should not be traceable.
- The last day of the survey was April 4.
- After the survey was closed, VR informed that the response rate for ALF region Stockholm was 78% for researchers and 71% for doctoral students.
Summary - Step 1 and Step 2
Below is a summary from VR of the number of people who received and responded to the questionnaires.
Respondents (quantity) | Response rate survey 1 (%) | Response rate survey 2 (%) | Respondents to survey 2 (number) | |||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Region | 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 |
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.