Contents	Introduction	Descriptive	Hypothesis	Tables	Appendix

Review Questions
 

Use the Intro and Methods section from the following condensed paper to identify the following:

1. Research question
2. Theory
3. Two abstract concepts
4. Two variables and level of measurement for each
5. Identify two statistical controls used by the author to improve external validity

Introduction:

Many commentators argue the federal government faces a quality crisis. Conventional wisdom suggests that poor pay, inadequate recruiting, and bureaucrat bashing have discouraged quality entrants from seeking employment with the public sector. However, 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 (Meier 1993). Comparative research between public and private sector employees has found that public managers have a higher need for achievement (Guyot 1962), service to society (Kilpatrick, Cummings, and Jennings 1964), serving the public interest (Rainey 1982; Perry and Wise 1990), and job security (Schuster 1974; Newstrom, Reif, and Monckza 1976; Bellante and Link 1981) than private sector employees. Adding to this list of differences is empirical evidence suggesting public employees value financial rewards less than their private sector counterparts (Kilpatrick, Cummings, and Jennings 1964; Schuster 1974; Rainey 1982, 1983).

Method:

The data used to compare public and private sector employee quality are provided by the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY). If the federal government was unable to attract quality personnel during the 1980s, this representative sample of young labor force entrants should demonstrate that. Specifically, the NLSY will be used to test the premise that the aptitude of civil service employees hired during the 1980s is less than the aptitude of private sector employees hired during the same period.

Aptitude is measured by the Armed Forces Qualifications Test (AFQT), a cognitive abilities test battery. The assumption guiding this analysis is that aptitude, as measured by AFQT, is a valid measure of entrant quality, not unlike its purpose in the armed forces screening process. This measure is admittedly incomplete. As an example, the GAO has noted that three kinds of information are needed to assess employee quality: knowledge and ability, individual values and motivations, and match between individual and job (Volcker 1990, 139).

An ordinary least squares regression model is employed to answer the question of whether when controlling for sex, race, economic status, and occupation, federal sector employees have AFQT scores that are significantly different from those employed in the private sector. Sex (0=female, 1=male) and race (0=nonwhite, 1=white) are included in the model to control for their differing incidence of employment between the public and private sector (Blank 1985) and variance in AFQT scores (Herrnstein and Murray 1994). In addition, family income from 1978 is used as an estimate of economic status. This is added to the model to control for NLSY oversampling of economically disadvantaged whites. Occupation is confined to those who had occupations in accounting, engineering, computers, secretarial services, management, and guard/night watchman positions as specified by Bureau of Census occupation codes.