Why is it important to establish the “goodness” of measures and how is this done?
> A consultant had administered a questionnaire to some 285 employees using a simple random sampling procedure. As she looked at the responses, she suspected that two questions might not have been clear to the respondents. She would like to know if her sus
> A magazine article suggested that “Consumers 35 to 44 will soon be the nation’s biggest spenders, so advertisers must learn how to appeal to this “over-the-thrill crowd”. If this suggestion appeals to an apparel manufacturer what should be the sampling d
> The medical inspector desires to estimate the overall average monthly occupancy rates of the cancer wards in 80 different hospitals which are evenly located in the Northwestern, Southeastern, Central, and Southern suburbs of New York city.
> Develop an ordinal scale for consumer preferences for different brands of cars.
> Suggest two variables that would be natural candidates for nominal scales, and set up mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive categories for each.
> The SERVQUAL-scale described in the appendix is formative in nature.” Comment on this statement. Explain why it does not make sense to assess the inter-item consistency of this scale.
> Develop and name the type of measuring instrument you would use to tap the following: a. Which brands of toothpaste are consumed by how many individuals? b. Among the three types of exams – multiple choice, essay type, and a mix of both – which is the o
> Mention one variable for each of the four scales in the context of a market survey, and explain how or why it would fit into the scale.
> Dawson Chambers is a young, dynamic and fast growing research agency that is specialized in Mystery Shopping, Market Research, and Customer Service Training. It is located in Geneva, Switzerland from where it provides national and international organizat
> Measure any three variables on an interval or a ratio scale.
> Design an interview schedule to assess the “intellectual capital” as perceived by employees in an organization – the dimensions and elements for which you developed earlier.
> a. Read the paper by Cacioppo and Petty (1982) and describe how the authors generated the pool of 45 scale items that appeared relevant to need for cognition. b. Why do we need 34 items to measure “need for cognition”? Why do three or four items not suf
> Identify the object and the attribute. Give your informed opinion about who would be an adequate judge. a. Price consciousness of car buyers. b. Self‐esteem of dyslexic children. c. Organizational commitment of school teachers. d. Marketing orientati
> Find the paper “Consumer values orientation for materialism and its measurement: Scale development and validation,” written by Marsha Richins and Scott Dawson. a. Provide an overview of the dimensions and elements of Richins and Dawson’s materialism sca
> Compare your service quality measure to the measure of Zeithaml, Berry, and Parasuraman (1996) presented in the Journal of Retailing. a. How does your measure differ from this measure in terms of dimensions and elements? b. Would you prefer using your
> Try to come up with two unidimensional and two multidimensional abstract concepts. Explain why these concepts have either one or more than one dimension.
> What are projective techniques and how can they be profitably used?
> Explain the possible ways in which you can control “nuisance” variables.
> What is bias and how can it be reduced while interviewing?
> Kyoto Midtown is a composite urban district of modern buildings surrounding a historic Japanese garden. It features sophisticated bars, restaurants, shops, art galleries, a hotel and leafy public spaces. Kyoto Midtown aims to offer a unique shopping expe
> As a manager, you have invited a research team to come in, study, and offer suggestions on how to improve the performance of your staff. What steps would you take to allay their apprehensions even before the research team sets foot in your department?
> Describe different data sources, explaining their usefulness and disadvantages.
> Explain the concept of “trade-off” between internal and external validity.
> What is internal validity and what are the threats to internal validity?
> Define the terms control and manipulation. Describe a possible Lab experiment where you would need to control a variable. Further, include a possible variable over which you would have no control, that could affect your experiment.
> In what ways do Lab experiments differ from Field experiments?
> What are the differences between causal and correlational studies?
> The Solomon Four Group Design is the answer to all our research questions pertaining to cause and effect relationships because it guards against all the threats to internal validity. Comment.
> If a control group is a part of an experimental design, one need not worry about controlling for other exogeneous variables. Discuss this statement.
> Explain why mortality remains a problem even when a Solomon four-group design is used.
> Jack O’Brien is a PhD student at the University of Edinburgh. Jack is working on a PhD thesis on the role of negative emotions, and more specifically the emotion anger, in service consumption settings. Jack’s dissertat
> History is a key problem in a time series design. “Other problems are main and interactive testing effects, mortality, and maturation.” Explain.
> Explain the difference between main and interactive testing effects. Why is this difference important?
> Explain how the selection of participants may affect both the internal and external validity of your experiments.
> How has the advancement of technology helped data gathering?
> How are multiple methods of data collection and from multiple sources related to reliability and validity of the measures?
> Explain the principles of wording, stating how these are important in questionnaire design, citing examples not in the book.
> How has the advancement of technology helped data gathering via questionnaires?
> One way to deal with discrepancies found in the data obtained from multiple sources is to average the figures and take the mean as the value on the variable. What is your reaction to this?
> Every data-collection method has its own built-in biases. Therefore, resorting to multi-methods of data collection is only going to compound the biases. Critique this statement.
> Provide relevant measurable attributes for the following objects. a. a restaurant; b. an investment banker; c. a consumer; d. a bicycle; e. a pair of sunglasses; f. a strategic business unit.
> When Song Mei Hui moved from being Vice President for Human Resources at Pierce & Pierce in Shanghai to her international assignment in New York, she was struck by the difference in perception of Pierce & Pierce as an employer in China and the Un
> Under which circumstances would you prefer observation as a method to collect data over other methods of data collection such as interviews and questionnaires?
> How is the interval scale more sophisticated than the nominal and ordinal scales?
> Describe the four types of scales
> Field notes are often regarded as being simultaneously data and data analysis. Why?
> What is rapport and how is rapport established in participant observation?
> Although participant observation combines the processes of participation and observation it should be distinguished from both pure observation and pure participation. Explain.
> Operationalize the following: a. customer loyalty b. price consciousness c. career success.
> What aspects of a class research project would be stressed by you in the written report and in the oral presentation?
> Why is it necessary to specify the limitations of the study in the research report?
> In 1965, a young man named Fred DeLuca wanted to become a medical doctor. Looking for a way to pay for his education, a family friend – Peter Buck – advised him to open a submarine sandwich shop. With a loan of $1,000,
> How have technological advancements helped in writing and presenting research reports?
> What are the similarities and differences of basic and applied research reports?
> Discuss the purpose and contents of the Executive Summary.
> What is bootstrapping and why do you think that this method is becoming more and more popular as a method of testing for moderation and mediation?
> A tax consultant wonders whether he should be more selective about the class of clients he serves so as to maximize his income. He usually deals with four categories of clients: the very rich, rich, upper middle class, and middle class. He has informatio
> What kinds of biases do you think could be minimized or avoided during the data analysis stage of research?
> There are three measures of central tendencies: the mean, the median, and the mode. Measures of dispersion include the range, the standard deviation, and the variance (where the measure of central tendency is the mean), and the interquartile range (where
> What is reverse scoring and when is reverse scoring necessary?
> How would you deal with missing data?
> Data editing deals with detecting and correcting illogical, inconsistent, or illegal data in the information returned by the participants of the study. Explain the difference between illogical, inconsistent, and illegal data.
> In the first months of 2010, U.S. Banks have launched a campaign that aims to win back trust of their consumers and repair their battered images. For banks, it is very important to rectify the violation of trust caused by the financial crisis if the fina
> Double sampling is probably the least used of all sampling designs in organizational research. Do you agree? Provide reasons for your answer.
> Over-generalizations give rise to a lot of confusion and other problems for researchers who try to replicate the findings. Explain what is meant by this.
> Because there seems to be a tradeoff between accuracy and confidence for any given sample size, accuracy should be always considered more important than precision. Explain with reasons, why you would or would not agree with this statement.
> Nonprobability sampling designs ought to be preferred to probability-sampling designs in some cases. Explain with an example.
> Use of a sample of 5,000 is not necessarily better than having a sample of 500. How would you react to this statement?
> The use of a convenience sample in organizational research is correct because all members share the same organizational stimuli and go through almost the same kinds of experiences in their organizational life. Comment.
> a. Explain what precision and confidence are and how they influence sample size. b. Discuss what is meant by the statement: “There is a trade‐off between precision and confidence under certain conditions.
> a. Explain why cluster sampling is a probability sampling design. b. What are the advantages and disadvantages of cluster sampling? c. Describe a situation where you would consider the use of cluster sampling.
> Why do you think the sampling design should feature in a research proposal?
> Identify the relevant population for the following research foci, and suggest the appropriate sampling design to investigate the issues, explaining why they are appropriate. Wherever necessary, identify the sampling frame as well. a. A company wants to
> The Standard Asian Merchant Bank is a Malaysian merchant bank headquartered in Kuala Lumpur. The bank provides financial services in asset management, corporate finance, and securities broking. Clients of The Standard Asian Merchant Bank are among others
> Construct a semantic differential scale to assess the properties of a particular brand of tea or coffee.
> Explain why it does not make sense to assess the internal consistency of a formative scale.
> Describe the difference between formative and reflective scales.
> Briefly describe the difference between attitude rating scales and ranking scales and indicate when the two are used.
> Discuss the ethics of concealed observation.
> Why is the ratio scale the most powerful of the four scales.
> Tables 15.A to 15.D below summarize the results of data analyses of research conducted in a sales organization that operates in 50 different cities of the country and employs a total sales force of about 500. The number of salespe
> Open the file “resmethassignment1” (you created this file doing the exercise from the previous chapter). Answer the following questions. a. Is the exam grade significantly larger than 75? b. Are there significant differences in the exam grade for men a
> Does work shift moderate the relationship between job satisfaction and intention to leave for Excelsior Enterprises employees?
> Provide the tolerance values and the variance inflation factors for all the independent variables in model 1. Discuss: do we have a multicollinearity problem?
> Discuss: what do the unstandardized coefficients and their p‐values in the first model imply? In other words, what happens to job satisfaction if perceived justice, burnout, and job enrichment change by one unit?
> Provide a logical explanation for the negative moderating effect of laptop possession.
> Is laptop possession a pure moderator or a quasi-moderator? Explain
> Why could it be important to differentiate between quasi moderators and pure moderators?
> Whenever possible, it is advisable to use instruments that have already been developed and repeatedly used in published studies rather than develop our own instruments for our studies”. Do you agree? Discuss the reasons for your answer.
> Use the data of the Excelsior Enterprises case to estimate the effect of work shift on job satisfaction.
> The Standard Asian Merchant Bank is a Malaysian merchant bank headquartered in Kuala Lumpur. The bank provides financial services in asset management, corporate finance, and securities broking. Clients of The Standard Asian Merchant Bank are among others
> Provide the equation for workers in the second shift.
> The MBA programme of a small Business School in the United States has always welcomed diversity in its student body and staff. Students from different countries come together in a multicultural classroom where they can share their ambitions for a career
> What are the main steps in qualitative data analysis?
> What is qualitative data? How do qualitative data differ from quantitative data?
> Below is an adapted note from Business Week published some time ago. After reading it, apply what you have learned in this chapter, and design a study after sketching the theoretical framework. The Vital Role of Self-Esteem Why do some people earn more t
> The job involvement measure described in the appendix is reflective in nature.” Comment on this statement.
> Why is analytic induction inductive (rather than deductive) in nature?
> Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of personal and telephone interviews.
> One of the main advantages of observation is its directness.” Discuss.
