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The NLS Annotated Bibliography - User Submission Form
CREWSON, PHILIP E. A Comparative Analysis of Public and Private Sector Entrant Quality American Journal of Political Science 39,3 (August 1995): 628-639 Cohort(s): NLSY79 ID Number: 2677 Publisher: Wayne State University Press Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher. Public and private sector employees differ in ways that run counter to the prediction that poor monetary incentives or image battering will leave the public sector disadvantaged in hiring quality employees. When controlling for sex, race, economic status, and occupation, entrants into the federal sector are better qualified than private sector entrants. Past research on the issue of employee quality is supplemented with a comparative analysis of public and private sector entrants during the 1980s. In the comparative analysis, AFQT scores are used as an indicator of quality. Contrary to predictions of a crisis in public employee competence, the federal government was able to attract higher quality entrants during the 1980s than the private sector. CREWSON, PHILIP E. GUYOT, JAMES F. Sartor Resartus: A Comparative Analysis of Public and Private Sector Entrant Quality Reanalyzed American Journal of Political Science 41,3 (July 1997). 1057-1065 Cohort(s): NLSY79 ID Number: 2938 Publisher: Wayne State University Press Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher. In "A Comparative Analysis of Public and Private Sector Entrant Quality" (Crewson 1995), one of us challenged, with systematic empirical evidence, a major proposition from the professional folklore. This proposition is that government in the United States faces a quality crisis because the best minds choose not to go into the public but instead into the private sector. The proposition was tested and found false by means of a cross sectional comparison of a representative national sample of entrants into comparable occupations in the federal sector, the state sector, and the private sector. When Armed Forces Qualification Test (AFQT) scores are taken as the indicator of quality, and the regression equation controls for occupation, family background, race, and sex, then the state sector is found to employ persons with scores no lower than the scores of those in the private sector, and the federal sector employs those with significantly higher scores. The ancillary proposition from the folklore is causal rather than descriptive. It suggests that any lower level of public sector quality or any decline over time in that quality may be, in part, a result of increased diversity in the federal workforce. That such diversity does make a difference was denied with the conclusion that, "[a]lthough there has been an influx of women and minorities during the 1980s, the federal government does not appear to have imperiled quality in its effort to increase diversity." In this replication we strengthen the disconfirmation of the first proposition and empirically test the second proposition. The further undermining of the quality crisis myth proceeds by both defining more firmly the validity of the AFQT as an indicator of "quality" and testing the effects of diversity on the original regression equation. Copyright 1997 by the Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System. Search returned 2 items. Search Start: 20:36:08 Search Finish: 20:36:08
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