Measuring association populations using the Encyclopedia of Associations: Evidence from the Weld of labor unions

Identifying populations of organizations has been a signiWcant methodological challenge for scholars interested in examining various organizational dynamics. A common solution has been to rely upon a prior list or database of organizations. One such database on voluntary national organizations is the Encyclopedia of Associations (EA), a standard tool for sociologists and political scientists interested in associations. This paper compares coverage of labor unions as listed in the EA with information on the same universe of organizations taken from the US Department of Labor’s OYce of Labor-Management Standards (OLMS). Results indicate that 103 of 135 (76%) of unions listed in the DOL were also listed in the EA. Among unions with more than 5000 members, EA coverage was 91%. Coverage This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 0111611. Any opinions, Wndings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reXect the views of the National Science Foundation. We would also like to thank Bryan Jones, Frank Scioli, and Thomson/Gale Publications. Daniel Jones-White and several excellent Penn State undergraduate students helped to create the database on which this article is based; thanks to each of them as well. * Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: [email protected] (A.W. Martin), [email protected] (F.R. Baumgartner), [email protected] (J.D. McCarthy). 0049-089X/$ see front matter © 2005 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.ssresearch.2005.06.004 772 A.W. Martin et al. / Social Science Research 35 (2006) 771–778 rose to 95% among those unions with more than 10,000 members. Finally, two measures of Wnancial size show the vast majority of unions with either receipts or net assets greater than $1,000,000 are included in the EA. The EA is therefore quite complete in coverage overall and appears to be nearly universal in its coverage of unions above even quite modest thresholds of organizational size and resources. © 2005 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.