The Advisors' Blog

– Broc Romanek, CompensationStandards.com

Tune in today, Thursday, October 24th for the webcast – “Drilling Down: Statistical Sampling for Pay Ratios” – so you can hear Pearl Meyer’s Jan Koors, Towers Watson’s Rich Luss and Frederic Cook’s Mike Marino get into the nitty gritty about how to conduct statistical sampling under the SEC’s pay ratio proposal.

This program will not be an overview of the SEC’s new proposal on pay ratio disclosures; we have posted plenty of memos to get you up-to-speed. Among other topics, this program will cover:

1. When sampling makes sense (large dispersed workforce, multiple pay databases, etc.)

2. What might be unintended consequences of identifying a “median employee” using pay definition different than ultimate SCT-based calculation of that person’s compensation for use in ratio

3. Selecting a sampling technique, which is best
– Random sampling? Stratified sampling? Other?
– Ability to provide explanation of process chosen and implications of decisions (eg. stratified sampling may produce more reliable or valid answers but may also involve quite a few decisions of where/who to oversample)

4. Determining sample size, how much precision is required
– The square root of n+1? Other?
– Data availability or comparability issues for global firms?

5. Reliability & validity, how are they relevant
– Constant results
– Accurate results