The State of Minority- and Women- Owned ... - Cleveland.com

Appendix A. Glossary
Substantive significance or constitutional significance: An indication of how large or small a
given disparity is. Under the EEOC’s “four-fifths” rule, a disparity ratio is substantively
significant if it is 0.8 or less on a scale of 0 to 1.
Supply-side: Refers to activity on the supply-side of an economic market. For example, when
new businesses are formed, other things equal, the supply of contractors to the market is
increased. See also “Demand-side.”
t-test, t-statistic, t-distribution: Often employed in disparity studies to determine the statistical
significance of a particular disparity statistic. A t-test is a statistical hypothesis test based on a
test statistic whose sampling distribution is a t-distribution. Various t-tests, strictly speaking, are
aimed at testing hypotheses about populations with normal probability distributions. However,
statistical research has shown that t-tests often provide quite adequate results for non-normally
distributed populations as well.
Two-tailed (or two-sided) statistical test: A “two-tailed” test means that one is testing the
hypothesis that two values, say u (utilization) and a (availability), are equal against the alternate
hypothesis that u is not equal to a. In contrast, a one-sided test means that you are testing the
hypothesis that u and a are equal against the alternate hypothesis u is not equal to a in only one
direction. That is, that it is either larger than a or smaller than a.
Utilization: A term of art in disparity studies that refers to the percentage of a given amount of
contracting and/or procurement dollars that is awarded or paid to businesses owned by one or
more groups of interest. For example, Table B1 indicates that overall M/WBE utilization on all
contracts was 19.21 percent of award dollars, indicating we found that 19.21 percent of the $1,16
billion of contract awards by the City of Cleveland accrued to minorities or women, either as
prime contractors or as first-tier subcontractors or suppliers. See also Availability, Disparity
Ratio.
WBE: Women-Owned Business Enterprise: A business establishment that is 51 percent or more
owned and controlled by nonminority women. In this Study, unless otherwise indicated, WBE
refers to nonminority women-owned firms.
ENC: Refers to the East North Central division in the NSSBF and SSBF data sets. The East
North Central region includes the states of Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, and Wisconsin.
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