Wage Differential between the Sexes Research Paper - 1

Wage Differential between the Sexes - Research Paper Example Total experience was obtained by adding ‘months since hire’ and ‘previous Experience’ This study utilized secondary sources for data collection. The use of secondary data is useful because it is cost-efficient and saves time for the independent researcher (Glaser, 1963; Hyman, 1978; Hayashi, 2000). The independent researcher has limited financial resources because he or she works alone. Such researchers are usually professionals who attempt to research some significant social problem on a part-time basis. A two-step attempt was made to discover if the income of professional females increases at the same rate as that of males with comparable education as the experience increase. During the first step, the existence and strength of a relationship between salary and experience for male and female professionals with a given university degree in a specific job were researched using correlational methodology. During the second step, a comparison was made between the incomes of males and females with the same experience. Attainment of an educational degree was held constant for each given professional position. The correlational research method was selected as the primary methodology because of its ability to discover relationships among logical variables (Wooldridge, 2008). It appears that there is a lack of congruence in the literature in establishing an association between the level of income, experience, and gender, and also a lack of significant research efforts towards establishing a link between income and experience by gender identification, therefore, the hypothesis was stated as a null hypothesis (Albrect et al., 2003; Atkinson et al., 2003; Blau et al., 2006).