Survey Questionnaire on the Employment Patterns of 2022 University Graduates

Taking into account city size, economic development levels and the distribution of higher education resources, eight cities were ultimately selected: Beijing, Guangzhou, Wuhan, Chengdu, Xi’an, Changchun, Guilin and Wuhu. These cover first-tier, new first-tier, second-tier and third-tier city categories and are distributed across different geographical regions. These cities exhibit significant differences in terms of economic development and higher education structure, providing a diverse contextual foundation for analyzing graduate migration patterns.

Second, within each sampled city, stratified sampling was conducted according to the hierarchical structure of higher education institutions. Based on the proportions of the three categories of institutions— ‘Class-One University Construction Institutions’, 'Class-One Discipline Construction Institutions’ and ‘Other Higher Education Institutions’—approximately 8–10 higher education institutions were selected in each city for the survey.

Ultimately,78higher education institutions across the eight cities were included in the study, comprising 12‘First-Class University Construction’ institutions,21‘First-Class Discipline Construction’ institutions and 45‘other’ institutions, thereby providing good coverage of higher education institutions at different tiers. Third, within each sampled institution, questionnaires were distributed using a ‘seed interviewer’ approach.

One interviewer （who also served as a respondent） was recruited from each institution to organize the completion of questionnaires on campus. Investigators primarily distributed the questionnaires via public spaces on campus （such as libraries and canteens） and through their personal social networks. To enhance the representativeness of the sample and the quality of the data, the research team strictly monitored the questionnaire collection process, requiring that the sample be drawn from at least 10 different departments and that the gender ratio broadly correspond to the overall gender composition of the institution’s graduates.

Between 80 and 100 questionnaires were collected from each university. A total of 7,632 questionnaires were collected during this survey. During data cleaning, this study excluded low-quality questionnaires with conspicuously short response times （less than five minutes） and those in which the same option was selected consecutively across multiple scales, ultimately yielding 7,364 valid questionnaires.Translated with DeepL.com （free version）