Data Background FAQ #1

Frequently Asked Questions

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Data Background FAQ #1

Frequently Asked Questions

QUESTION:  Is the Executive Compensation Assessor (XA) a salary survey?

 

ERI surveys the cash and non-cash compensation paid to the top executives of publicly traded enterprises, that is, data reported via the US Security Exchange Commission's (SEC) Edgar system, Canadian information circulars, and remuneration tables from Annual Reports released in the UK and Europe.

 

ERI also collects executive data from multiple salary survey sources.  Jobs found within XA are those for which multiple salary survey sources are available and for which reported data has been condensed, modified and compiled.

 

The XA databases do not reproduce data reported by any copyrighted (privately conducted) survey.  This would be copyright infringement and would undermine the sales of individual surveys.  Many surveys are produced by small proprietors, struggling to maintain quality control in an industry dominated by large consulting firms and the US federal government OES surveys.  These survey publishers need both your and our support.

 

The XA application and databases combine SEC data with a distillation of data from salary survey sources and displays an updated consensus range of cash compensation.  However, even though the data reported in XA is a distillation of data from both private and public survey sources, XA only reports the SEC-sourced components of compensation.  Also, please note that the variance statistics are extremely conservative because they are based only on the SEC observations (the only elements that can be accurately counted without risk of data redundancy and/or double-counting).  The same process applies to compensation reported from Canadian information circulars and European annual reports.