The National Sample of Scientists and Engineers sponsored by the National Science Foundation, is intended to include a series of biennial surveys designed to provide current data on the educational, employment, and career characteristics of persons in scientific and engineering fields. This report is based on the first survey in this series, the 1974 National Survey of Scientists and Engineers. The panel for the 1974 survey is a subpopulation of participants in the 1972 Professional, Technical, and Scientific Manpower Survey.

From characteristics determined in the 1972 Professional, Technical, and Scientific Manpower Survey, persons were classified into the following eight fields of science and engineering—computer specialists, engineers, mathematical specialists, life scientists, physical scientists, environmental scientists, psychologists, and social scientists—or as not in any of these fields. All persons who were classified into one of the eight fields in 1972 were included in the 1974 National Survey of Scientists and Engineers. Respondents in the 1974 survey were then classified into one of the scientific or engineering fields in 1974 or as not being in a field of science and engineering in 1974.

Table 1 of this report describes the sex and age composition of all categories of respondents and nonrespondents^/1 in the 1974 survey,² and provides a distribution of the persons in the fields of science and engineering in 1972 by their 1974 reclassification. The remaining tables of this report deal exclusively with the characteristics of respondents in 1974. For convenience, persons in the category “not in a field of science or engineering" are referred to as “out-of-scope."

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¹ Data on nonrespondents are found in the “Did not report in 1974" category of table 1.
² Since the National Sample of Scientists and Engineers is a Series of sample surveys, the words “respondent" or “nonrespondent", when applied to members of the universe, refer to the number in the universe represented by sample persons who responded or did not respond, respectively, to the 1974 survey.