At PayScale, our salary data resides in the largest real-time online employee salary database in the world. The salary database was built from the millions of curious individuals who want to compare their salary data and understand the market for their skills.
We create each individualized salary report by analyzing anonymous salary data collected from people with similar job titles, years experience, education, etc. and in a similar labor market – location, company size, industry, etc. This automated process includes extensive checks and statistical tests for consistency and accuracy on all salary data.
The great advantage PayScale has is that the people who do the job — who know what makes them special and know why they earn what they earn — are the people answering our questions. These individuals are motivated to answer the questions with accurate salary data, so that they will in turn receive an accurate salary report.
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How exactly do you check the accuracy of each individual’s volunteered data?
I looked at two different websites, this one and 1.salary.com, and got a difference of about $10K/year. This website gave a lower average salary which leads me to ask how old is the data your collecting and how reliable is this information?
What percentage of salaries are self reported, versus collected from companies? Couldn’t there be a selection bias affecting the results? Perhaps people with higher salaries are more likely to report? Is there any data on this subject?