Tapping the Americorps Pipeline

Abstract

In 1996, Perry found that public sector employees tended to differ from their private sector counterparts on dimensions relating to attraction to public policymaking, commitment to public interest, compassion, and self-sacrifice. While considerable Public Service Motivation (PSM) research has followed, much of the PSM literature either uses secondary data without testing for construct validity or aims to respecify the original scale. Little attention has been paid to testing the validity of the PSM construct using secondary data. This study examines the presence of PSM-related values among a group of individuals who expressed interest in joining the national service program AmeriCorps in 1999. The purpose of the study is to determine whether PSM-related values are identified among a likely population when Perry’s PSM Scale was not used. It is found that two of Perry’s original dimensions of PSM are identified among the sample as well as one adapted dimension of PSM.