Jimmy the manager of one of Sallys pizza shops decides to co

Jimmy, the manager of one of Sally’s pizza shops, decides to conduct a research study to determine if his happiest employees are also his highest performing employees. He watches all of his employees without their knowledge and quietly records the number of times he witnesses them smile in each day. He then compares these values with their most recent overall performance evaluation, which is single value between 1 and 5 (1=terrible employee; 5=perfect employee).

a) Is this an experiment, quasi-experiment or correlational study, and why?

b) Can Jimmy provide evidence that happiness causes increased performance evaluations using this design? If not, how could he change this design so that he can?

c) What is the treatment and what is the control condition?

d) What is a possible hypothesis for Jimmy’s study?

e) Is Jimmy drawing his participants from a sample or a population?

f) What constructs are being assessed, and how are they being operationalized?

g) Are the number of smiles and performance evaluation scores collected here quantitative or qualitative?

h) Are the number of smiles and performance evaluation scores collected here discrete or continuous?

i) What are the scales of measurement of the number of smiles and the performance evaluation score as assessed here?

Solution

Answer to part a)

It is a study to find out if the happy employees and the highest performing employees are the same

the motive here is not to say : that those who are happy perform well , or vice versa. Jimmy\'s aim is not to draw a cause a effect relation

He is just interested in observing: are the two variables\"happiness\" & \"performance\" related

Thus it is a correlational study

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Answer to part b)

When we conduct a correlational study , the aim is to test if there is a correlation in the two variables

If the correlation in \"happiness\" and \"performance\" exist , this may do not assure a cause and effect relation

This mean We can not be sure of the cause and effect relation

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In order to find if the causal relation exists it is important to find the correlation

if there exists strong correlation , the next step is to observe the time order of reaction

this means that there must be a change in the independent variable \"happiness\" first and then the performance must be observed

Thus the desing can be as follows

we can assign the employees in two groups :

One group is kept happy , and the other group is kept in normal and natural enviroment

then the performance of both the groups is compared

this study desing will tell us if happiness affects the performance or not

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Answer to part c)

We can keep the treatment : as providing happy enviroment to the employees and the control can be the \"same natural enviroment without maing any changes\"

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Answer to part d)

the possible hypothesis for Jimmy\'s study would be :

Null hypothesis: happiness has no effect on employee\'s performance

Altenrate hypothesis: Happyiness has a storng effect on employees performance

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