How helpful are the various products that are offered by the Association to the members in perfonrJng their responsibilities? Do the types of analyses conducted, the frameworks utilized, and the usefulness of various Association products change with professional maturity? Can the AJAE, Choices, and the AAEA professional meetings be changed to serve the membership more effectively? What role does and might each product of the Association play in enhancing effectiveness of the members?The design of the questionnaire used to address these questions attempts to identify professional needs of the AAEA and how the Association might better serve those needs. The vast majority of questions elicit quantitative rather than qualitative responses . In terms of an investment and production process for members’ activities, the questions attempt to determine the nature and type of graduate training during the human capital investment process, the inputs used , and in what forums the products or results are reported. In some instances, the questions attempt to detemline how activities change over the course of professional careers. For the services of the AAEA, questions focus on a comparison of what each member desires vs. receives.After choosing the initial set of questions, the survey was pretested among a nonrandom sample of respondents.As with all surveys, the trade off between simplicity and accuracy naturally arose. An attempt was made to remove ambiguities; but,vertical aeroponic tower garden as a result of the questions being short and concise, it was impossible to remove all ambiguities.
The questions are not reported here because of limited space. Once the questionnaire was-finalized, it was mailed to the complete population of all domestic, non-student, non-family members of the AAEA as recorded in the AAEA business office. This population was composed of2,623 potential respondents. The anonymity of each respondent was assured. Initially, 963 questionnaires were returned; thus, the response rate was 36.7 percent. This initial response rate was quite acceptable, and we wish to thank all those who took the time to respond to the survey. To correct for possible sample selection biases, a follow-up survey was mailed to 6.5 percent of non-respondents. Of these, 12 percent responded to the second request. Conventional Chow tests of differences in the followup from the original sample revealed significance at the 5 percent level for only a bit over 5 percent of the questions. Significance for 5 percent of the questions should be expected if there was no statistical difference. Accordingly, all results that are reported here are based on the original 963 returned questionnaires.A number of analyses were conducted for the purpose of drawing implications for research, graduate curricula, professional media, and scientific exchange at AAEA professional meetings. The results of these analyses are reported in tables 1 through 4 and figure 1. Table 1 focuses on – members’ ideal distribution of the three major forms of professional media sponsored by the AAEA among the following areas of emphasis: applications of an existing model, development of a new model, definition of a problem, discussion and assessment of current events, descriptive analysis of problems, individual viewpoints, and all other categories.The differences in these responses from the perceived present distribution were regressed against the response which identifies the extent to which each member’s job responsibilities are academic research, extension research, other extension, teaching, industry, government research, and other government activities. These estimated coefficients are reported in the rows of table 1 so named. The estimated coefficients give the average desired percentage change among topics for a hypothetical individual whose appointment is 100 percent in the area identified by”1he various row names in table 1.
The other rows of table 1 labeled “All respondents” give the average percentage change from perceived to ideal distributions across the entire sample. The results for the AlAE suggest that all respondents as a group want more problem definition and descriptive analysis published in the AlAE but less individual viewpoints and .” assessment of current events. These results are consistent with the views of the anecdotal evidence section which argues for more focus on problems and case studies. As for the results by type of respondent, academic research is the only group that would prefer more individual viewpoints; teaching, industry, and government prefer less. As expected, academic researchers want fewer applications of existing models published in the AlAE while industry would prefer more new model development. In the case of Choices, the results are remarkably uniform across professional groups. Moreover, the results are highly significant relative to the AlAE or the AAEA professional meetings.’ Specifically, all respondents want more’ application of both new and existing models, more problem definition and assessment of current events, and less individual viewpoint and descriptive analysis. Apparently, members of the Association would prefer Choices to move somewhat in the direction of an academic journal, to wit, the desired increase in model applications but at a very readable level. It should be noted, however, that the statistical results that are reported in table 1 must be tempered by the large number of favorable written comments about Choices in response to Question 22. The response to this question reveals strong membership support for Choices.For the AAEA professional meetings, all respondents would prefer more application of both existing and new models, more problem definition and descriptive analysis, and less individual viewpoints. It should be emphasized that the desire for less individual viewpoints is uniform and significant across almost all professional groups. These results again support the perspective advanced in the anecdotal evidence section regarding needed emphasis on problem definition and case studies. For the AlAE and the AAEA professional meetings, the results in table 1 are mostly insignificant while those for Choices are highly significant.
This is expected since the AlAE and AAEA meetings are at a mature stage of development whereas Choices has been instituted recently. With the more mature forms of media, either the distribution of emphasis tends to converge to merrJoership desires or membership perceptions are swayed by what is observed after a long period of time. Thus, Choices can be regarded as a medium that may not have reached an equilibrium between perception and desire. In any event, the most uniform results across all media is the desire for less individual viewpoints and more problem definition. Moreover, there seems to be a fairly consistent desire for more use of models, except for the AlAE. Table 2 reports how the type and basis of analysis as well as the perceived quality of the various types of analyses change with professional maturity. In terms of the basis for analysis, all professional groups migrate away from using published secondary data toward relying on . understanding and experience over the course of their professional career. This result is taken to be a reflection of what individuals do over their professional careers, but it could also reflect differences among educational cohorts. The latter explanation could result from recent graduates being more highly trained in econometrics, statistics and data analysis and, as a result, using these methods with greater frequency. Here, again, problem definition and case study approaches appear to receive greater emphasis with professional maturity. For the types of analyses that are conducted,vertical gardening in greenhouse original fomlal frameworks tend to receive decreased emphasis with professional maturity. 1l1is may be due either to increasing reliance on experience and intuition or to increasing obsolescence of human capital. This trend is the strongest for academic researchers. Note that industry relies increasingly on fonnal frameworks developed by others. This change, however, almost balances with a decline in the reliance on original formal frameworks. Heuristic application of principles increases with maturity, particularly for academic researchers and teachers. The use of “gut” intuition declines with maturity, especially for teachers and industry members. Note that the importance of problem definition increases significantly for all respondents, especially teachers, industry, and government research members. Aside from the increasing importance of heuristic application of basic economic principles in government research work and the use of gut intuition in industry, there is very little significance among the potential sources of effectiveness with professional maturity.
One curious outcome with respect to industry, however, is the increased importance with professional maturity of gut intuition as a source of effectiveness but its decreasir’5 role as a type of analysis. In any event the collective results of table 2 show that professional maturity leads to declining fonnal analysis with secondary data and increasing reliance on problem definition and heuristic application of economic principles. Moreover, with professional maturity, the type of analysis is increasingly based on personal understanding and experience, particularly for applied professional groups such as teaching, industry, and government research. These results strongly support the emphasis on problem definition and case studies of the anecdotal evidence section. Table 3 presents the ideal course work emphasis in graduate training desired for new recruits. In addition, the differences of these desired levels from respondents’ actual course work experience are reported. As the results clearly indicate, all respondents would prefer less economic theory, less econometrics and statistics, less applications, and more case studies. The results are surprisingly unifonn across all professional groups. The greatest changes are desired by industry and government followed closely by extension professionals. These results too are consistent with – the hypothesis that the major problems we face as a profession require customized rather than standardized or generic solution frameworks. Determinants of power and influence in both industry and government was evaluated by linking the number of employees supervised or the level of influence in the organization to coursework, basis for analysis, type of analysis, and years since the last degree. In the results reported in table 4, the intercept includes the effects of econometrics and statistics course work, use of published secondary data, and lise of original fonnal frameworks on the number supervised :lIId the level of influence. For industry, all types of course work are superior to econometrics and statistics and significantly so for the level of influence. Almost the opposite results are obtained for government but without significance. These results support the view that different types of skills get rewarded in government relative to industry. Replacement of economic theory and econometrics and statistics with case studies as suggested by table 3 is also supported by the results for level of influence in both government and industry. Analysis undertaken with secondary data obtains the least reward in both industry and government. Understanding and experience obtain the highest reward in three of the four cases with greatest significance in all instances. These results also support the hypothesis regarding the importance of customized rather than standardized or generic solution frameworks which, in turn, emphasizes the importance of problem definition and case studies. One surprising result with respect to the detenninants of power and influence is the effect of professional maturity. Years since the last degree has only one positive effect; however, none of the measured effects are significant. For the types of analysis, industry professionals give the highest weight to gut intuition while government professionals are rewarded most for descriptive analysis geared toward problem definition followed by the use of secondary formal frameworks . This outcome is consistent with the positive significance of gut intuition as a source of effectiveness with professional maturity for industry professionals. These results can perhaps be best explained by the relative emphasis in government research on ex post deductive evaluation. In contrast, industry professiomils are frequently posed with futuristic questions which require ex ante, inductive analysis. In contrast, many government professionals spend relatively more time explaining what has happened.The linkages among various professional groups are reported in table 5 in tenns of the sources of conceptual thinking, sources of reports and forecasts, and outlets for completed analyses. The results of this table along with the corresponding empirical structural representation in figure 1 show that the profession is not fragmented asis sometimes claimed. To the extent that results reflect reality rather than desire, the degree of interaction is suggestive of a well integrated profession. For sources· of conceptual thinking, professional meetings are the plimary input media for all professional groups.