RicciR Documentation

Firefighter Promotion Exam Scores

Description

Data on firefighter promotion exams as part of the Ricci v. DeStafano court case

Format

A data frame with 118 observations on the following 5 variables.

Race

Race of firefighter (B=black, H=Hispanic, or W=white)

Position

Promotion desired (Captain or Lieutenant)

Oral

Oral exam score

Written

Written exam score

Combine

Combined score (written exam gets 60% weight)

Details

The city of New Haven, Connecticut administered exams (both written and oral) in November and December of 2003 to firefighters hoping to qualify for promotion to either Lieutenant or Captain in the city fire department. A final score consisting of a 60% weight for the written exam and a 40% weight for the oral exam was computed for each person who took the exam. For each person who took the exams, there are measurements on their race (black, white, or Hispanic), which position they were trying for (Lieutenant, Captain), scores on the oral and written exams, and the combined score. These data were used as part of a court case (Ricci v.DeStefano) dealing with racial discrimination

Source

Data (RicciData.csv ) and documentation (Ricci.txt) downloaded from
http://www.amstat.org/publications/jse/jse_data_archive.htm

An article on using these data: Miao, W. (2011) "Did the Results of Promotion Exams Have a Disparate Impact on Minorities? Using Statistical Evidence in Ricci v. DeStefano," JSE 19:1 at
www.amstat.org/publications/jse/v19n1/wilson.pdf