Children, care time, career priority – What matters for junior scientists’ productivity and career perspective during the COVID-19 pandemic?

Abstract

Background: The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic brought about restrictions, additional workload, insecurity, or need for inventing new routines for professionals worldwide. The pandemic and its restrictions have been discussed as a career shock. OBJECTIVE: Adding knowledge to this, our study investigated the academic and family (care) situation of young scientists in a German technical university. METHODS: We conducted an online survey including young scientists from a technical university in Germany in April 2021. 346 participants (mean age 33 years, 37% women) gave self-ratings on academic and life situation during the pandemic year, care work, preferences for scientific career and family life. RESULTS: Family and career were independent priorities (r = 0.021, p = 0.676). Two thirds (68%) of the young scientists reported no deterioration in scientific outcome during the pandefmic year. But, care times and number of children impacted negatively on scientific productivity in terms of publications. This was true for both women and men. CONCLUSIONS: Young scientists need individual support for their career perspective, according to their concrete career level and life situation.

Research and postgraduate supervision during the Coronavirus-19 pandemic: Lessons learned

“…Abundant research has been conducted on the effect of COVID-19 on doctoral students' wellness and mental health (Lokhtina et al 2022;Yin et al 2022;Allen et al 2021); social isolation (Pyhältö, Tikkanen, and Anttila 2022;Filho et al 2021), as well as how doctoral students' productivity declined (Lokhtina et al 2022;Lambrechts and Smith 2020), did not decline (Muschalla, Sondhof, and Wrobel 2022), or increased (Lindahl 2023;Jackman et al 2022). However, there is a dearth of research on the effect of COVID-19 on postgraduate research supervision during this pandemic.…”