A researcher wants to understand how male and female food servers interact with

Question

A researcher wants to understand how male and female food servers interact with customers in a restaurant.  The researcher sits alone at a table in the corner of the restaurant, uses a stopwatch to record the length of each interaction, and takes notes about each food server waiting on customers.  The researcher discovers female food servers spend more time with customers and smile more than do male food servers.

Questions:

What is the independent (predictor) variable(s):

What is the dependent (criterion) variable(s):

Weaknesses of this study or the method:

Can we conclude for certain that female food servers are superior employees?  Why or why not?

Explanation / Answer

The independent variable is the gender of the food server, that is, whether the food server is male or female.

The dependent variable is the length of the interaction of the server with the customers.

The weakness of this study is that the number of food servers of both gender are not same, as generally there are more female servers. Also the allocation of the customers to servers is not random, and also this study does not take into account the nature of the customers. Some customers also like to be more interactive.

No we can't conclude for sure that female employees are superior, because just based on the interaction length we can't judge that an employee is superior, it all depends on customer satisfaction. Using interaction length as a parameter to judge the superiority of servers is not justified in any way.

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