6/16/2004 -- Riddle me this, Techman: What percentage of people who eat butter are involved in incidents of vehicular manslaughter versus those who prefer margarine?

Before you spend as much time thinking about it as I'm certain you are prone to do, let me ask another question: does it matter? Is there any way to prove a correlation between butter consumption and automobile accidents? Of course not - the two are totally unrelated. And yet, I would propose to you that if someone really wanted to, they could come up with dizzying sets of numbers that make it seem as if the two items might somehow intertwine….

My father used to be fond of spouting off snippets of wisdom garnered from the bottom of the pages of Reader's Digest. One of his favorites was that statistics don't lie, but statisticians do. That saying has been around in various incarnations for a while but persists because there is a gem of truth in it.

Towards the end of last year, CompTIA partnered with Kotler Marketing Group to conduct a survey and write up the results in a whitepaper entitled "Measuring the Value of CompTIA Certification," which it provided to study participants and members of CompTIA's various groups. While the paper is no longer available to the general public (it used to be at http://www.comptia.org/surveysolutions/roiwhitepaper0903.pdf), you can read a press release summarizing some of the results, here. Note that while I certainly do not mean to imply that the numbers were altered in any way from the results recieved, I do find some of the results to be of little merit.

Among the results:

• Beneath the Network+ findings, it was found that organizations that employ a high number of CompTIA certified individuals have a lower turnover rate. I'm not going to argue with that. I do believe that if you have a lot of certifications, you're more likely to stay put longer than if you have zero certifications, but I don't think Network+ has anything to do with it. I think you got the certifications because you want to work in this field and enjoy it and are more likely to stay in it.
  
  
• Also beneath the Network+ findings, it was reported that downtime at organizations is lower when the number of those certified is higher. Again, I'll agree with it on the surface, but encourage you to look beneath. Could it be said that certification is usually on the minds of larger companies more than it is on the minds of smaller companies? If so, doesn't it also hold true that smaller companies would be generally expected to have more downtime than larger companies? My brother has a network of two computers in his "office" and has downtime of the network lasting for days; he also has no idea what Network+ is and thinks it involves meeting other singles on the first Friday of each month.
  
  
• Turning to the A+ findings, the one that caught my eye was that "A high certification help desk can handle the average help desk workload at a salary cost that is 8 percentlower than a low certification help desk." In other words, if you hire people who know what they are doing, you can get by with a cost savings of 8%. That's a selling point? Suppose I have a company with 10 technicians and I'm paying them each $26,000 a year for a total annual outlay of $260,000. These survey results tell me that if the technicians were A+ certified, I could get the same work done for only $239,200. When you consider how much it will cost to get these ten technicians certified (tests, books, time, etc.), I think I'm better off keeping them ignorant.
  
  
• General findings found that "IT mangers have greater confidence in CompTIA-certified employees' ability to handle complaints than they do in non-certified employees." Again, I am in agreement with this. But does it mean anything? Would IT managers have greater confidence in LPI or CIW or Novell-certified employees than in non-certified employees? The results given are akin to saying that managers have more confidence in financial reports prepared by college graduates. While you can't dispute it, it is missing the level of detail saying that the reports prepared by those with degrees in accounting are held in higher regard than ones prepared by those with degrees in physical education. For this survey result to be meaningful, it would need to be compared against other certifications and not just the complete lack of anything else.
  
  
• One final finding: CompTIA reports that 85 percent of the 692 IT professionals who responded said that they plan to pursue additional CompTIA certifications in order to advance their careers. Given that CompTIA specializes in entry-level certifications, this means that 85 percent of the people who are now certified at entry-level think they will better their careers by getting another entry-level certification. Not to belittle the point too much, but I can't help but wonder if 85 percent of the people with a high school degree think they will be better off by getting another high school degree?

Surveys are a wonderful tool for gathering information, but the key to any survey is to measure results that have real meaning and then put them in their proper perspective. If you do not do this, then the results you get may appear meaningful on the surface, but fail to hold up to close scrutiny. Post below and let me know your take on this as well as what benefits you think the certifications you hold have in the marketplace today.