¹ The strongest request came from the Central Statistical Board. See White, Leonard D., “New Opportunities for Economists and Statisticians in Federal Employment”, American Economic Review, Vol. 27, no. 1, Supplement, pp. 210–215 (March, 1937)Google Scholar.

² U. S. Civil Service Commission, Annual Report, 1936, p. 3.

³ Following one of the desirable features of the British system of recruitment. For a discussion of age limits in the United States, see Majoewsky, Walter V., “Maximum Age Limits at the Time of Employment”, Public Personnel Studies, Vol. 8, pp. 67–72 (May, 1930)Google Scholar.

⁴ The fields of political theory and public opinion were excluded from the written examinations by the heads of the examining division of the Civil Service Commission on the ground that it would be undesirable to include fields for which there would never be a chance of a call from an appointing officer. The omission of these fields from the examinations worked a handicap on the applicants educated in certain universities, of which Harvard is probably the best example.

⁵ Contrary to the current notion, short-answer questions can be prepared which will test for more than factual information. Short-answer questions can, with sufficient care and insight, be drafted in such a way that they are incapable of proper answer without the application of real thought. It is a difficult task, but it can be done.

⁶ Many short-answer questions can be asked in an examination that do not, in point of fact, have any predictive value. That is, the answers to such questions demonstrate neither competence nor probable usefulness on the part of the examinee. Care was taken to see that a minimum of such questions were included in the examinations.

⁷ Satisfactory, or passing, was defined as 70, or 7 out of the 10 required questions.

⁸ Unpublished data of the U. S. Civil Service Commission. The figures presented do not take account of the subsequent appeal cases.

⁹ Until the social science analyst examinations, the Civil Service Commission was frequently criticized for rating competitors on insufficient information. Now the Commission is condemned because it asks for the information it needs. In the case of the social science analyst examinations, the real basis for criticism is that information was requested in two installments instead of one.

¹⁰ Some competitors, on the other hand, have complained that the examinations were not broad enough—that they should have included history, psychology, philosophy, education, and biometry especially. Still other critics outside the Commission hold that no field whatsoever should have been left out; but that, of course, would have nullified the whole idea of an examination for “social scientists,” since for the lowest grade it would have meant only a repetition of the examinations for junior civil service examiner, and for the five higher grades it would have resulted in a monstrous conglomeration.

¹¹ In all fairness, it should be stated that throughout the entire year during which work was being done upon the social science analyst examinations there were only five social scientists on the Commission's staff to carry the load.

¹² A multi-field examination for “junior professional assistants” was announced on January 30, 1939 (closed February 27, 1939, written examination given May 6, 1939), which covered most of the professions in the federal civil service but was limited to the junior level. The registers established from optionals 1 and 7—junior administrative technician and junior economist—may supersede the social science analyst examinations (on the junior level only) in the case of the various political science registers and the several registers in the economics and the agricultural economics fields. A preliminary count shows that of the 43,410 applicants for the junior professional assistant examination, optional 7 (Junior Economist) led with 8,414, optional 8 (Junior Engineer) was second with 7,985, and optional 1 (Junior Administrative Technician) was third with 5,903. A pertinent aside, useful to readers of this Review, is the fact that through March, 1939, the only political science fields of interest to operating agencies, as indicated by actual use of the various social science analyst registers, were Public Administration, Public Finance and Fiscal Administration, and Government and Business; and the latter two fields savor of economics.