Explaining Congressional Staff Members’ Decisions to Leave the Hill

Bibliographic Data

ID6183233
AuthorsJennifer M Jensen (0000-0002-6465-6135, Binghamton University, corresponding author)
Year2011
Volume38
Issue1
Pages39-59
Publication date2011-02-10
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueCongress & the Presidency (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0734-3469 • E-ISSN: 1944-1053
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/07343469.2010.501645
OpenAlexW2058058819
LanguageEN
Citations received9
References cited32

The high turnover of congressional staff members can have a negative effect on the functioning of Congress as an institution. Though junior staff turnover is not considered a significant concern, the high turnover of senior staff members is problematic. Using data from a survey of staff members located in the Washington personal offices of House of Representatives members, this article investigates what factors influence the likelihood to leave congressional employment. Specifically, I explore how solidary, purposive, and material work incentives influence staff members' plans to exit. The results of two different models—one for junior and mid-level staff members and one for executive staff members—indicate that purposive incentives, and material incentives that accrue for future employment opportunities, carry the most weight across both models. Current salary has a significant effect on executive staff members, but not on their lower-level counterparts. Following this analysis, I propose actions that congressional offices might take to retain staff. Acknowledgments I thank Sylvia Roch, Nadia Rubaii-Barrett, Eric Winterbauer, Patrick Wolf, and the anonymous reviewers for their comments and suggestions, and Jill Adelman for her research assistance. All errors are my own. Notes 1. Topics have included who wants to work for the federal government (CitationLewis and Frank 2002); job satisfaction and dissatisfaction among government employees (e.g., CitationRusbult and Lowery 1985; CitationDaley 1992; CitationTing 1997); job exit among both the regular civil service (CitationLewis 1991) and the Senior Executive Service (CitationWilson 1994); and public service motivation (CitationPerry and Wise 1990), among others. 2. The Congressional Management Foundation biennial employment studies survey chiefs of staff to gather demographic information on all staff members in a given office. CitationFox and Hammond (1977) rely on in-depth interviews and surveys of professional staff, but congressional staff career opportunities have changed much since the 1970s, and updated data are warranted. 3. The CMF study was drawn from questionnaires completed by chiefs of staff about each member of their office staffs; the widely-cited CMF studies focus primarily on demographic characteristics, salaries, and work experience of staff members. The CMF's 2002 House study collected data on more than 2,000 staff members. The sample of responding offices is generally very representative of the larger population of House personal offices, though the CMF notes that offices of freshmen and sophomore representatives are slightly overrepresented and office of African-American representatives are somewhat underrepresented. 4. Due to strict human subjects protocol constraints, survey responses did not contain individual identifiers; as a result, it is not possible to match survey responses with actual job exit data. 5. As all those surveyed worked in the House of Representatives at the same time, certain institutional or economic characteristics are constant and thus are not included in the model. For example, important factors might include a change in the partisan control of the executive branch (CitationSalisbury and Shepsle 1981) or the current unemployment rate (CitationHom and Kinicki 2001), but these cannot be included in a model using data from one point in time. Characteristics of individual personal offices might also influence likelihood to exit; for example, CitationSheridan (1992) finds that organizational culture influences job tenure, and CitationSalisbury and Shepsle (1981) find that House of Representatives committee staff members are more likely to exit when there is a change of committee chairs. Since the survey did not focus on characteristics of the employee's office, and did not identify the particular member for whom a respondent worked, these characteristics are also beyond the scope of this analysis. Thus, the model presented here situates itself within the literature on how individual characteristics and attitudes influence the likelihood to leave an employment situation. 6. Correlated at .48, satisfaction with gaining good work experience and satisfaction with opportunities for advancement seem to be tapping benefits that accrue to different groups of staffers. Senior staff members are more likely to be pleased with the opportunities for advancement, while junior job members are more satisfied with their opportunities to gain good work experience. 7. To calculate the predicted probabilities, all other variables were set at their median response values. As men were slightly more than 50% of executive staff respondents, my hypothetical executive staff member is male. As women were the majority of junior and mid-level respondents (a plurality of whom were legislative assistants), my illustration for this level respondent is female. 8. CitationAllison (1999) and CitationHoetker (2004) provide a word of caution when interpreting the magnitude of coefficients across groups. Hoetker (2004, 1) explains: "Logit and probit coefficients are scaled by the unknown variance of their residual variation. Naïvely comparing coefficients as one would in linear models assumes that residual variation is the same across groups, though in many cases it may merely reflect the difference in residual variation across groups, rather than real differences in the impact of coefficients across groups." To gauge the size of the effect within the two groups, I present illustrations of the size of the effect for each model

Business · Economics · Incentive · Institution · Management · Nonprobability sampling · Political science · Public relations · Salary · Turnover · Work (physics · Electoral Systems and Political Participation · Engineering · Medicine · Political and Economic history of UK and US · Psychology · Public Policy and Administration Research

Tools

Open DOISci-Hub