Does Recruitment Message Content Normalize the Superintendency as Male?

Abstract

Purpose: The purpose of the study was to use a recent feminist conceptual framework (Tallerico, 2000a) to frame an investigation of whether emphasizing the major roles of the job and district size in recruitment messages for a hypothetical superintendent’s position influenced participant job attraction ratings. Research Methods: This study used a 2 × 3 × 3 analysis of variance (ANOVA) design with each cell containing equal numbers of men and women. The independent variables were gender (male, female), selected major roles associated with the superintendency (instructional leadership, managerial leadership, political leadership), and district size (1,500 students, 3,000 students, and 12,000 students). The dependent variable consisted of an additive composite score of participant responses to three items representing a measure of job attraction. Sampling Procedure and Data Collection: Seventy-six percent of the randomly selected sample of 360 public school principals in Alabama (male = 180, female = 180) completed a consent form, a demographic data form, and rated one of nine recruitment messages for a hypothetical superintendent’s position. Major Finding: ANOVA procedure using a composite rating of three items as the dependent variable revealed that the roles accounted for 14% of the variance in participant attraction for the position with both men and women rating position announcements emphasizing the instructional leadership role significantly more positively than position announcements emphasizing either the managerial leadership role or the political leadership role. Analyses of variance on the single item related to job attractiveness revealed a main effect for superintendent roles and a two-way interaction between superintendent roles and district size. The least positive ratings for both men and women were messages emphasizing the management role in districts with 3,000 students enrolled and the political role in districts with 12,000 students enrolled. Implications and Conclusion: The contents of the recruitment messages influenced participant ratings to a significant degree. From a practical standpoint, the findings encourage careful consideration of the language used in recruitment messages and support the utility of the framework to inform future studies.