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Social Indicators Research

Erschienen in:

01.05.2014

Ethnic Discrimination in Recruitment and Decision Makers’ Features: Evidence from Laboratory Experiment and Survey Data using a Student Sample

verfasst von: Lieselotte Blommaert, Marcel Coenders, Frank van Tubergen

Erschienen in: Social Indicators Research | Ausgabe 3/2014

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Abstract

This article examines which individual-level factors are related to people’s likelihood of discriminating against ethnic minority job applicants. It moves beyond describing to what extent discrimination occurs by examining the role of individuals’ interethnic contacts, education and religion in shaping their behavior towards ethnic minority job applicants. We derive expectations from theories from the interethnic attitudes literature. Data are collected via (1) a laboratory experiment in which student participants (n = 272) reviewed résumés of fictitious applicants who varied regarding ethnicity, gender, education and work experience and (2) a survey amongst the same participants. During the experiment, participants assess applicants’ suitability for a job and select applicants for an interview. Additionally, participants complete a questionnaire including questions on several personal and background features. Results show that individuals who have more positive interethnic contacts, higher educational levels and higher educated parents are less likely to discriminate against ethnic minority applicants. Individuals whose parents are church members are more likely to discriminate, as are males. We find interesting differences regarding the role of decision makers’ features between different stages of the recruitment process. First assessments of applicants’ suitability for a job are predominantly affected by applicants’ features. Differences between decision makers here are relatively small. Eventual choices about which applicants to invite for a job interview, however, are affected by both applicants’ and decision makers’ features; here differences between decision makers are more pronounced. Theoretical implications of these findings are discussed.

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Although these methods have merits of their own (National Research Council 2004).

In the Netherlands, graduates from both higher vocational education and university have access to prestigious occupations on the local and on the national (and perhaps international) level. Hence, those with higher vocational education often compete with university graduates for the same jobs.

In 2010–2011, non-Western ethnic minorities made up 15 % of all students in higher vocational education and 13 % of those in university; a difference of 2 % points and about 15 %.

These individuals are expected to hold less negative attitudes towards ethnic minorities and to be less likely to discriminate. Hence, they may affect overall outcomes. However, their number is too small to reliably test this expectation.

Online Recruitment System for Economic Experiments, a widely used recruitment system for laboratory experiments.

This is common in the Netherlands, where most individuals of Moroccan or Turkish origin keep their nationality when they obtain the Dutch nationality. In fact, Morocco does not allow renunciation of the Moroccan nationality.

Mean suitability of those selected was 8.58 (SD = 0.76) and for those not selected 6.86 (SD = 1.27). This difference is significant (p = 0.00).

The average suitability rating was 7.11 for native Dutch applicants and 7.05 for minority applicants. A t test showed that this difference in means is statistically significant (p = 0.03).

Some applicants (25 %) were never selected; 68.75 % were selected more than once. These figures are the same for both native and minority applicants. This may seem remarkable at first sight, but bear in mind that some kind of pattern is to be expected here, due to the obvious qualitative differences between applicants that result from varying the four applicant features systematically. There are applicants that have lower education and no work experience (weaker candidates), applicants with higher education who do have work experience (stronger candidates), candidates who have a higher level of education but no work experience, and candidates who have a lower level of education but who do have work experience. Ethnic differences in the number of times applicants were selected for a job interview do exist. For native Dutch applicants, the mean number of times that they were selected is 35.5, whereas for ethnic minority candidates it is 33.2. This difference in means is statistically significant (p = 0.01). The maximum number of times that an applicant was selected is 158 for native Dutch candidates and 142 for ethnic minority applicants (not shown).

Analyses in which these participants were excluded did not lead to different outcomes.

When we estimate standard multilevel regression models, results and conclusions remain unchanged.

Strictly speaking, our data consist of three levels: the résumé, job, and applicant level. But as models controlling for the three-level structure led to the same results as two-level models, we omitted the job level from our analyses.

For the multilevel linear and logistic regressions we used the xtreg and xtlogit commands in Stata 11, using the ‘fe’ option for fixed effects in both cases and the ‘or’ (odds ratios) option in the logit model.

Note that using fixed effects models makes it unnecessary (and impossible) to include the main effects of participant features; only the interactions are entered into the analyses (Verbeek 2000).

First, we conducted analyses including the interaction effect of participants’ and applicants’ gender in our model. Second, we ran separate models for male and female participants.

Additional analyses examining interaction-effects between résumé characteristics showed that the positive relation between education and work experience on suitability ratings and invitations for interviews are generally somewhat stronger for minority applicants than for native applicants. No significant interactions between applicants’ ethnicity and gender were found.

Additional analyses were conducted which included suitability ratings as a control variable in the model for selection for an interview as an additional test for discrimination. Outcomes showed that this did not affect our results; the other associations remain the same.

In addition to analyses that combined outcomes for Moroccan-Dutch and Turkish-Dutch applicants, analyses were conducted to check whether results are comparable across these ethnic groups. Outcomes showed that the findings are robust and largely insensitive to ethnic group differences; patterns emerging from the results are the same for both ethnic minority groups. There are a few minor, non-systematic differences mainly due to some relations becoming insignificant when analyses are conducted for the groups separately. However, all relations remained in the expected directions. It is likely that these group differences are due to the relatively small number of participants in this experiment. They should, therefore, be interpreted with caution.

This conclusion remains the same if a dichotomous variable for interethnic contact quality (contrasting individuals who classify their interethnic contacts as (very) negative to those who perceive their contacts as neutral to (very) positive.

Additional analyses were conducted to verify if difficulties associated with estimating interaction effects in logistic regressions (such as described in Norton et al. 2004) may have affected our conclusions. These analyses were conducted using the inteff command in Stata which is explicated by Norton and colleagues. This command is, to the best of our knowledge, not available for multilevel or fixed effects regression analyses, which would be most suitable. Hence, we opted for logistic analyses with cluster controls. Outcomes of these additional analyses generally confirm the results presented in Model 2 of Table 3. In fact, some of the interaction effects in the additional analyses (those with parental church membership and participants’ gender) are stronger than the ones presented in Table 3. Other effects (those with own and parents’ interethnic contact frequency as well as interethnic contact quality) remain the same in size and significance level. One interaction effect (with participants’ education) was slightly weaker but remained significant, and one interaction effect (with parental education) became insignificant.

Own calculations based on labour force survey micro data (‘Enquête Beroepsbevolking’) retrieved from Statistics Netherlands); a representative sample of the population of the Netherlands aged fifteen and older.

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Titel: Ethnic Discrimination in Recruitment and Decision Makers’ Features: Evidence from Laboratory Experiment and Survey Data using a Student Sample
verfasst von: Lieselotte Blommaert
Marcel Coenders
Frank van Tubergen
Publikationsdatum: 01.05.2014
Verlag: Springer Netherlands
Erschienen in: Social Indicators Research / Ausgabe 3/2014
Print ISSN: 0303-8300
Elektronische ISSN: 1573-0921
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-013-0329-4

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