Professional Research and Communication

Assignment 1

Overview

This is an early intervention task worth 10% of the course. The purpose of the early intervention task is to make sure that you are engaging and on track to pass the course.

This task consists of a series of questions that go over the material that we covered in weeks one to four. They require you to think carefully about the material and tell me YOUR thoughts on what the answers should be and justify your answers where necessary.

This is an individual assignment that you are expected to complete by yourself. All outside sources of information must be acknowledged.

Learning Outcomes Assessed

The following course learning outcomes are assessed by completing this assessment:

K3. Identify appropriate research philosophies for IT projects which match organisational approaches

S1. Utilise effective communication practice in organisations.

S2. Demonstrate expert English language skills in academic and professional contexts

Assessment Details

1.     Consider a survey in which customers' perceptions of the service at a local store are gathered using a Likert Scale. Using this survey the customer gives a score of 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5 in response to a statement about the service. The scores represent

1 - Strongly Disagree

2 - Disagree

3 - Unsure

4 - Agree

5 - Strongly agree

For example, one of the statements might be "The staff member appears knowledgeable regarding the store's products" and the customer would give a score based upon how much they agree with the statement. Now consider a situation in which 100 customers provide a response to this statement and they are distributed as follows

Now let's assume that the store wants to summarise this data into a single score. They calculate this score by multiplying the number of responses by the number assigned, adding the five together and dividing by the number of respondents. In this case, (10 + 50 + 51 + 128 + 80) / 100 = 319/100 = 3.19

Explain why this value is not a valid summary of the data collected. Suggest a more valid way of representing the data. Justify your response.

2. Consider the situation of a polling company which wants to predict the outcome of an upcoming election. They send their employees to stand on street corners in the capital city between 9 and 12 every week-day, with instructions to stop passers-by and ask them which party they will be voting for in the election. Does the data collected provide a true reflection of the likely outcome of the election? Explain why or why not? Justify your answer.

3. We discussed four types of quantitative data in class - nominal, ordinal, ratio and interval. What types of data are collected from each of the following questions? Justify your answer.

a. The number of cars passing through an intersection in an hour, in whole numbers

b. Kelvin thermometers

c. Fahrenheit thermometers

d. The type of mobile phone someone has (Nokia, Samsung, Apple, Other)

e. A person's height.

4. Assume you are the lecturer for a university topic. You believe it is possible that attending lectures in person rather than viewing lecture recordings online will improve student performance. Explain how you could test this hypothesis in each of the following ways:

a. As a descriptive non-experimental study

b. A quasi experimental study

c. An experimental study

Which of the studies would give you the firmest evidence of whether your theory is correct? Justify your answers.