Cross-sectional Study. The main body of this report focuses on replicating the questions of the 1992 study. In effect, it is a second cross-sectional study. Its central objective is to determine if the race/ethnic gap in healthcare management careers has narrowed since 1992 based on a similar group of respondents.

The sample for the 1992 study was derived from two sources: names of blacks were obtained from NAHSE; names of whites were obtained from ACHE. As displayed in Table 1, the gender distribution of blacks was approximately 50 percent male and 50 percent female. The white sample was drawn to approximate the gender distribution of the blacks to facilitate the comparisons.

In 1997, the white sample was again drawn from ACHE's membership files to facilitate the comparison with the 1997 NAHSE membership listing--again approximately 50 percent of the sample and respondents were women and 50 percent were men. In 1997 however, it became possible to enlarge the NAHSE listing of blacks by including ACHE members who were black. This was done to obtain a fuller population of blacks which would ideally reveal the actual career attainments of all blacks in the U.S.

For Hispanics, again, two sources were used to obtain the sampling frame: members of the AHHE and members of ACHE. Asian healthcare executives do not have their own national group. Therefore, all of the Asian members of the ACHE were studied.

The questionnaire was administered in the spring of 1997. Non respondents were sent a second questionnaire and to the extent possible, telephone calls were made to encourage completion of the 22 page questionnaire.

The response rates to the cross-sectional study questionnaire are presented in Table 1. Of the 767 blacks sampled, 410 or 54 percent responded. However, because some 30 were unemployed and a few failed to provide their gender, 30 were eliminated from the analysis. Of the 802 whites who were sampled, 51 percent responded. Of 662 Hispanics sampled, 40 percent responded. Finally of 235 Asians sampled, 53 percent responded. Analyses of non-respondents are presented in Table 37.

Because the composition of the groups differed in gender, and because of the importance of gender in career attainments, we present the findings for women and men separately. Thus, among black respondents in the study, women constitute 53 percent of the group; among whites, women constitute 50 percent of the group, among Hispanics, women constitute 36 percent of the group and among Asians, women constitute 34 percent of the group. (Refer to Table 1.) Such separation is essential in order to partial out the effects of gender from the effects of race/ethnicity.

Follow-up Study. Another question addressed in Section 2 of this report is, "What happened to the careers of those we studied in 1992?" Specifically, did the respondents to the 1992 study differentially benefit from their additional five years of experience in the field? Did the blacks manage to close the gap in positions attained or salaries earned? These questions are addressed in the second section of the report and are referred to as the follow-up study.

In both sections of the report, we determined statistical significance by using chi-square tests for categorical variables and t tests for continuous variables using a two-tailed significance level of 0.05 or less.