Data Compatibility Issues: How to Prevent Miscoding and Dropped Observations When Using U.S. Office of Personnel Management Data Sets

• Author: Ashley M. Alteri
• DOI: 10.1177/0734371X20904998
• Published date: 01 December 2020
• Date: 01 December 2020
• Published By: Sage Publications, Inc.
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/0734371X20904998

Review of Public Personnel Administration

2020, Vol. 40(4) 743 –753

© The Author(s) 2020

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DOI: 10.1177/0734371X20904998

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Article

Data Compatibility Issues:

How to Prevent Miscoding

and Dropped Observations

When Using U.S. Office of

Personnel Management

Data Sets

Ashley M. Alteri1

Abstract

A critical comparison of the agency identifier codes in the Federal Employee Viewpoint

Survey (FEVS) and FedScope data sets reveals three distinct types of issues will occur

when researchers attempt to merge the data sets: (a) a single agency is assigned different

codes across data sets; (b) a single code is assigned to different agencies across data

sets; and (c) a single code is assigned to two or more agencies in the FEVS data set

and a separate agency in the FedScope data set. Between 2013 and 2016, these issues

are present in almost all major federal departments. Compatibility issues between

the agency identifiers could cause the user to drop observations unnecessarily or

unknowingly combine two different agencies’ data improperly. If uncorrected, these

issues will distort the analysis of studies that rely on this combination of data. However,

researchers can correct for this issue and still use Office of Personnel Management

(OPM) identifiers to combine data across multiple data sets.

Keywords

data issues, FedScope, Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey, survey research, panel

data

The U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) is one of the key sources of data on

human resources and performance-related metrics for federal employees. In addition

to serving as the human resources and policy guide for the U.S. federal government,

1Tennessee State University, Nashville, USA

Corresponding Author:

Ashley M. Alteri, College of Business, Tennessee State University, 330 10th Avenue North, Suite K445,

Nashville, TN 37203, USA.

Email: aalteri@tnstate.edu

904998ROPXXX10.1177/0734371X20904998Review of Public Personnel AdministrationAlteri

research-article2020