EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Measuring the Strength of Teachers' Unions

Katharine O. Strunk and Sean F. Reardon

Journal of Educational and Behavioral Statistics, 2010, vol. 35, issue 6, 629-670

Abstract: The literature on teachers' unions is relatively silent about the role of union strength in affecting important outcomes, due in large part to the difficulty in measuring union strength. In this article, we illustrate a method for obtaining valid, reliable, and replicable measures of union strength through the use of a Partial Independence Item Response (PIIR) model. This method uses the individual regulations found within collective bargaining agreements (CBAs) and models their existence as a function of a contract-specific latent level of restrictiveness. This allows for the estimation of (a) a measure of the latent level of relative union strength and associated standard errors of measurement; (b) the reliability of the measure; (c) item severities for each item addressed in the contract, allowing for assessment of item restrictiveness; and (d) contract and item information.

Keywords: teachers' unions; union strength; IRT (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.3102/1076998609359790 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:jedbes:v:35:y:2010:i:6:p:629-670

DOI: 10.3102/1076998609359790

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of Educational and Behavioral Statistics
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().

 
Page updated 2025-03-19
Handle: RePEc:sae:jedbes:v:35:y:2010:i:6:p:629-670