Data on Researchers ’ Self-Reported Disability Status

Ensuring a strong and diverse workforce is a top priority for NIH. To this end, we regularly assess the sex/gender, race, and ethnicity of NIH-supported researchers to better understand the composition of our workforce and participation in our programs. Investigators may self-report their disability status along with these other demographic characteristics on their eRA personal profile. This allows us to learn more about researchers with disabilities in the NIH-supported scientific workforce. Not only is this of interest to NIH, but many in the community have also asked us about this as well. This post presents some of these data. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported in August 2022 that just over 1 in 4 adults in the United States have some type of disability. When focusing on data on the workforce, the National Science Foundation (NSF) suggests modest growth in the percentage of academic scientists with disabilities over the past two decades, going from 6 percent in 1999 to 9 percent in 2019. NSF data related to the future workforce also show that 9.1 percent of all graduates earning a doctoral degree in 2019 reported having a disability. These gaps between persons with disabilities engaged within the biomedical research workforce compared to the general population, together with our continued interest in strengthening the workforce, contributed to the creation of a Subgroup of the Advisory Committee to the NIH Director (ACD) last year to identify strategi...
Source: NIH Extramural Nexus - Category: Research Authors: Tags: blog Open Mike Funding data scientific workforce diversity Source Type: funding