Government Finance Officers Association's (GFOA) Distinguished Budget Presentation Awards Program: Differences between successful and denied applicants

This dissertation focuses on the Government Finance Officers Association's (GFOA) Distinguished Budget Presentation Awards Program. The number of applicants has steadily increased since the awards program was initiated in 1984. In order to win the award an agency must receive a favorable rating by reviewers, based on guidelines established by GFOA. This exploratory research relates to those local government agencies which applied for the award during the 1991-92 fiscal year. Very limited research has been conducted on this GFOA awards program. No research has identified differences between winning and denied agencies. The broad research question is: Is there a significant difference between winning and denied applicants for the award, according to the studied variables? The hypothesis is that there are differences between the groups, according to the studied variables. A survey of all 584 applicants was conducted during March, 1993. A total of 544 surveys were returned. The statistical techniques employed in the study include t-tests, chi-square analysis, and discriminant analysis. The null hypothesis that there is no difference between the means of the two groups (winning and denied agencies) is rejected for thirteen (13) of the thirty-eight (38) variables. Through discriminant analysis, the research identifies seven variables which create the best discriminant function. These variables include population size (POPULATE), use of performance measures (PERFMEAS), use of word processing (WORDPROC), previous receipt of the GFOA financial reporting certificate (GFOACERT), agency participation as a program reviewer (REVIEWER), number of pages in the annual budget (PAGES), and participants' views that the program uses a fair process of evaluation (FAIR). Future research into the GFOA Distinguished Budget Presentation Awards program should include more detailed analysis into the variables which appear to be associated with winning agencies.