Survey of all PhD candidates at Goethe University

We want to know more!

We do not actually know who is currently pursuing a PhD at Goethe University. But at least we know that we do not know! We have recognised the gap in knowledge and are responding by launching the first university-wide survey of PhD candidates and supervisors. This puts us far ahead of many other universities.

What we would like to know from you?

Nowadays there are several ways to earn a doctoral degree, ranging from classic supervisor-student relationship to highly structured programmes. And the individual circumstances each PhD candidate is confronted with vary even more.

We have devided our survey into several different question blocks to get a realistic sense of diverse needs and wants of individual doctoral candidates, so we can respond accordingly. The picture will be completed by the parallel survey of all supervisors.


Below, you find question blocks with exemplary contents that will appear during the completion of the questionnaire.

Questions about your doctorate

  • Why do you want to earn a doctoral degree and why at Goethe University?
  • How are you funded, what infrastructure ar eyou supplied with?

Questions about the working and research enviroment

  • What kind of offers for exchange and qualification provides your environment ?
  • Which further duties do you have and how are your working hours allocated?

Questions about supervision

  • Who is supervising you and how satisfied are you with the supervision?
  • In which areas and how intensive are you supervised?

Questions about your need for support

  • Which offers would you expect within the areas of consultation, further qualification,  organization of the doctorate, and career planning?
  • Do you know about the graduate academy GRADE? Do you use the offers?

Questions about personal details

  • sex, age, nationality
  • highest degree

How to participate?

All you need is your personal access code.

There are three ways to obtain your code:

  • You will be personally invited to participate in the survey via E-mail, which will include your personal access code.
  • You will be personally invited to participate in the survey via letter, which will include the access code.
  • If you do not receive your personal access code from us, you can request it directly via E-mail.

You will only receive a personal invitation, if your contact information was recorded during one of the following procedures and is still valid:

  • Doctoral candidate's registration with the faculty
  • Enrolling as a PhD student (matriculation file)
  • GRADE membership
  • Membership in a structured programme

The contact information were pooled to get a list of all PhD candidates at Goethe University. If you request a personal access code, your data will be added to this list. This contact information is used only for survey invitation and will be deleted afterwards.

The procedure has been reviewed and verified by Goethe University's data security representative.

Further information