Argument and Evidence in Ethnic Analysis: "Hispanics in the Public Service"Author(s): James F. GuyotSource: Public Administration Review, Vol. 53, No. 6 (Nov. - Dec., 1993), p. 567Published by: Wiley on behalf of the American Society for Public AdministrationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/977367 .

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Argument and Evidence in Ethnic Analysis: "Hispanics in he Public Service"

James F. Guyot, Baruch College, City University of New York Antonio Sisneros advances an impor-

tant argument and provides a wealth of evidence in "Hispanics in the Public Ser- vice in the Late Twentieth Century" (PAR, January/February 1993). Unfortu- nately, the evidence occasionally contra- dicts the argument, most notably in two of his four data tables.

Consider a central point announced in the abstract of the article: "although Hispanics are increasing in numbers, they are underrepresented in key admin- istrative positions at all levels of govern- ment." This creates a "concern.. .that His- panics will not get their share of...positions" in the executive, adminis- trative, managerial, and professional ranks (p. 2). Underrepresentation is a matter of comparative ratios, in this case the proportion of Hispanics in govern- ment positions compared to those in some relevant population base. The author quite appropriately takes the His- panic proportion of the civilian labor force as his base, pointing out that "His- panic participation rates in federal, state, and local governments lagged behind the private sector throughout the 1980s" (p. 2). This fact is demonstrated in the top half of his Table 2.

Problems arise, however, when he focuses his analysis on key administra- tive positions in the bottom half of that same table, which is reproduced below.

First of all, the text misstates what the table shows. The text says: "A different pattern emerged.. .in 1988... .Hispanic participation rates were higher for administrators...in the federal service than for officials/managers...in the pri- vate sector. A similar picture was observed in 1988 in the professional ranks" (p. 2). Actually, as inspection of Table 2 shows, this "different pattern" did not emerge in 1988 but was already

there in the previous period and remained in the subsequent one. Fur- thermore, it appeared not only at the federal level but also at the state and local level among both administrators professionals.

The only possible exception to this consistent pattern of higher Hispanic participation rates in the higher levels of the public sector was among the state and local administrators in 1974. The state and local level figures for 1974 were lower than the private sector figure for 1978. But that is weak evidence for a lag since 1978 is a later year, and the public figure for 1974 was ahead of the private figure for the nearest earlier year, 1966. All together, then, in 11 out of 12 possible comparisons, the public sector clearly led, rather than lagged behind, the private sector. By this evidence, Hispanics were overrepresented, rather than underrepresented at these ranks.

Next, consider the second point put forward in the abstract: analysis of "the record of NASPAA institutions in recruit- ing Hispanic students and faculty during the 1980s." The central evidence used for this analysis appears in Table 4, which is reproduced below.

The problem here is the professor's cavalier juggling of standards for judging what is change and what is not change. This he does in a fashion that throws the benefit of the doubt behind the advancement of his own proposition, an inversion of standard social science practice. The first column of Table 4, NASPAA Enrollment, presents a series of figures that drops by 20 percent from the initial point in 1981, remains precise- ly flat for three two-year intervals, and then rises at the end to 40 percent above the initial point. This the author characterizes as "constant throughout

the decade [of the 1980s]" (p. 4). True, the final, high point, in 1991, is literally not in the 1980s, yet without 1991 as an endpoint the series does not span a decade. If that sizeable jump in the last interval is real, should it not have been taken into account in characterizing the trend?

A more extreme case of a strange standard is the analysis of the last col- umn, the percent of NASPAA Faculty who are Hispanic. This series the author judged "relatively constant throughout the 1980s" (p. 4). Again, the last and highest point of the series has been omitted from the characterization of the trend. Yet, even excluding the final jump of 40 percent, the pattern would seem on its face to be much clearer this time: a low level established by two data points at the beginning, fol- lowed by two points that are 50 percent higher.

Let us charitably assume that these judgments are based on a laudable skepticism about whether anything much can be inferred from figures drawn from diverse sources which may have different definitions and different data collection procedures. The null hypothesis properly triumphs where the data are dirty. If the analyst is so cau- tious in these two cases, why, then, does he take as real the even trickier trend that the middle column shows for MPA degrees? This series his analysis characterizes as "relative progress achieved in the mid-1980s [and] lost by the end of the decade..." (p. 4). Again, inspection of the table shows the rate of Hispanic participation higher in 1991 than it was at the beginning of the decade in 1981. So, too, goes the trend with two other degrees that show progress, the BAs and DPAs. They both appear in the author's Table 4, but are neglected in the text.

Since the argument that Professor Sis- neros advances is an important one and he has presented it in the form of docu- mented research, the readers of PAR should be able to expect more careful reasoning from evidence to argument than has been demonstrated thus far.

Public Adminstration Review * November/December 1993, Vol. 53, No. 6 567

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