Harvard Medical School Alumni, 1978

This study, begun in March, 1978, was designed to explore the career patterns of women graduates from Harvard Medical School, and to determine the extent to which these patterns differ from those of the school's male graduates. The first group of participants were graduates from 1967-1977. The sample was chosen by selecting the name of each woman and the adjacent man's name from alphabetical alumni lists. The research was expanded to include a sample of alumni from the classes of 1949-1966 in addition to soliciting more data from the 1967-1977 participants. The second questionnaire (Questionnaire II) sent to the 1967-1977 participants added questions on background and parents' occupational history, changes in career plans, and division of labor and child care. There were also some open-ended questions about differences between same and opposite sex career paths, career aspirations, reasons for changes in career plans and/or disruptions, illness, and income. Participants from the classes of 1949-1966 were sent a four-page questionnaire (Questionnaire III) that covered the information in the other two questionnaires, so that the completed data from the two sets of alumni would be comparable. The Murray Research Archive has original record paper data from almost 500 participants.