Sample specs

Career Advancement Survey Sample Specifications

Sample will be drawn from the Sept. 2006 Civilian Personnel Data File (CPDF).

Full-time, permanent non-seasonal employees in pay status.

Include members of the career SES; exclude political appointees.

Agencies covered will include Departments, subcomponent bureaus, and independent agencies with >1,000 employees.

Select employees on a random basis for each numbered stratum in the accompanying spreadsheet.

Sample with be stratified by sex (2), RNO (5), and base pay groupings (3) to create 30 cells.

Approximately 800 survey respondents will be selected per cell for a total of 24,000 survey respondents.

This number will facilitate making comparisons for all groups to be studied, even after shrinkage of the viable respondent pool since the number of prospective respondents per cell will decrease due to circumstances beyond our control even before we can attempt to contact employees. For example, due to the age of CPDF data (September 2006), some employees will have separated from the Federal Government or the agency in the interim and valid email addresses may not be obtainable for some employees as an individual’s email addresses may have changed. Additionally, a sizable percent of employees may elect not to complete the survey, further reducing the number of usable responses.