Faculty salary equity: Issues in regression model selection

Faculty salary equity is a hot political issue that may have severe legal, monetary, and human consequences. It is also an issue that often requires the use of sophisticated statistical techniques for the determination of inequity. The purpose of this paper is to identify the areas in which human judgment must be made in order to conduct a statistical analysis of salary equity and to provide some informed guidelines for making those judgments. The direction and magnitude of the final results are contingent on the way these statistical decisions are made. Therefore, careful consideration of these issues is essential for conducting a fair and defensible salary equity study. This paper will provide a framework based on four decision elements and four fields of study as the basis for establishing criteria for selecting an appropriate salary equity model. Through this discussion, the author hopes to bring a broader perspective and, if not objectivity, then ethical fairness to the process of designing salary equity models.Presented at the Annual Forum of the Association for Institutional Research, Atlanta, Georgia, May 1992.