More than noise? Explaining instances of minority preference in correspondence studies of recruitment

ABSTRACT

Correspondence studies of labour market discrimination find that minorities, which in general suffer disadvantage, are sometimes preferred in a choice against members of the majority. This outcome has been observed in several studies of ethnic or nationality-based discrimination, but also in studies focusing on other characteristics, such as unemployment and being overweight. However, it is generally not explained and dismissed as noise. In this paper we challenge this understanding, and, using meta-analytical techniques, we show that instances of minority preference are not randomly distributed. We also show that they are more frequent for groups which overall suffer stronger discrimination and for high skilled professionals. We reason that this result may be explained with the fact that groups that suffer discrimination have fewer alternatives in the labour market and this makes them more attractive for jobs of sub-standard quality and for jobs in which turnover costs are high (e.g. high skilled professionals). We conclude by arguing that since tests in which the minority candidate is preferred are not randomly distributed, future research should study the determinants of minority preference in a more systematic manner.

KEYWORDS:

• Correspondence testing
• discrimination
• minority
• hiring
• employers

Acknowledgments

We thank Dorian Koller for excellent research assistance, and Damaris Rose and Fabienne Liechti for comments. This research was conducted within the framework of the nccr-on the move (project 7), which is financed by the Swiss National Science Foundation.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Flavia Fossati http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9218-5422

Notes

1 The curvilinear relationship could be replicated also with a bigger sample of 29 studies that consider a total of 249 estimates of disadvantage (see Figure S1 in the supplementary material). However, in these 14 additional studies, besides different occupations job related characteristics such as skill level, firm size, sector of occupation, are included as well.

2 The net discrimination rate is only one of the different methods used to report findings of correspondence tests. However, this problem applies to all methods that are usually applied, such as call back rates by ethnicity or odds ratios. In either case, the information on the proportion of individual paired tests in which only the minority candidate is invited is lost and thus remains unexplained in the quantitative literature.

3 ‘Continuance commitment’ refers to a rational calculus of the costs associated with quitting a job. It depends essentially on investments and alternatives (Meyer and Allen 1991: 71)

4 The same analyses were replicated for round 2 for the year 2004 and yield similar results.

5 Perceived employment alternatives were measured by the question ‘How difficult or easy would it be for you to get a similar or better job with another employer if you had to leave your current job’. Subjective discrimination with the question: ‘Would you describe yourself as being a member of a group that is discriminated against in this country?’

6 This hypothesis was suggested to us by Tobias Müller.

7 Valid applications equal the number of total call-backs, i.e. where both, or either the majority or the minority candidate were invited for a job interview. Thus, the only cases that are excluded are the instances where neither candidate is called back.

8 We did not include audit studies working with telephone or in person applications, survey or other types of experiments. We also excluded studies that do not analyse labour market outcomes (i.e., housing market, etc.).

9 We also exclude the 15 additional studies working with other methods than written correspondence testing.

10 The estimation based on the larger sample can be found in the supplementary material in Table S4 and Figure S1.

11 See also Figure S2 in the supplementary material.

12 As indicated by one anonymous reviewer, the curvilinear relationship could also be driven by an unobserved variable that impacts on the proportion of tests in which both candidates are invited. This variable could be for example the total number of applications received for an opening. When there are few candidates overall, employers will tend to invite everyone, whereas when there are many candidates, they might be more selective and let both discrimination and noise (which determines minority preference) play a bigger role, hence the positive correlation. Since we do not have information on the total number of applicants we cannot rule out this alternative explanation. However, this view is incompatible with the finding that minority preference is more prevalent among high skilled professionals. In fact, it seems reasonable to assume that there are fewer candidates for high skill than for low skill jobs, if the effect we see were driven by varying numbers of applications, we should see less gross discrimination and less minority preference of high skilled vacancies, i.e. the opposite of what we see. 

13 We excluded audit studies because of the methodological problems linked to the difficulty of control for individual unobserved characteristics of the actors, who apply for the different positions, and in order to have a sample of estimates that is as homogenous as possible.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Schweizerischer Nationalfonds zur Förderung der Wissenschaftlichen Forschung [grant number nccr-on the move IP7]; nccr – on the move [grant number nccr-on the move IP7].