Question

The National Association for Law Placement (NALP) gathers yearly data on starting salaries of newly hired lawyers. These salaries are self-reported and NALP recognized there’s a problem with that data so it came up with an adjusted mean:

Essentially the adjusted mean compensates for the fact that the distribution of reported full-time salaries is not the same as the distribution of reported full-time jobs, particularly when it comes to law firm jobs. Whereas salaries for most jobs in large firms are reported, fewer than half the salaries for jobs in small law firms are reported.

To come up with an adjusted mean truer to the population mean, NALP gives a different weight of reported salaries from a large firm versus reported salaries from a small firm. How did NALP make these adjustments and why?

		It gives a larger weight to the large firms because such firms have more people working there.
		None of these make sense.
		It gives a larger weight to the large firms, because a disproportionate amount of their data comes from larger firms.
		It gives a larger weight to the small firms because each reported salary at a small firm represents relatively more hired lawyers.
		It gives a larger weight to the small firms because small firms generally do more important work.

Answer 1

NALP gives larger weight to the small firms because each reported salary at a small firm represents relatively more hired lawyers.