Dr. Jones works as an industrial/organizational psychologist for a large microch

Question

Dr. Jones works as an industrial/organizational psychologist for a large microchip manufacturing plant in Phoenix, AZ.  The company is contemplating moving to a flex-time work schedule for its employees.  Instead of working 5 days a week at the traditional 8-hour shift from 8:00 am to 5:00 pm with an hour off for lunch, employees will work four 10-hour shifts choosing which 4 days to work.    Although other companies have reported that flex time schedules increase both employee morale and production levels, the company executives are concerned that not enough employees will be on site during critical production times.

They ask Dr. Jones to carry out an evaluation study of the new work schedule.   There are two fabrication units at the plant, Fab A and Fab B.   Company records give monthly production levels for each unit.   Dr. Jones chooses to move all employees in Fab A to the new flex schedule for the next three months.  Employees in Fab B will stay on their old schedule.    The figure attached to the first question shows chip production levels for the two units for the 3 month trial period (2010) along with comparable data from the previous year (2009).   

A) what type of study is this.B) Was there an independent variable?  A dependent variable?C)Why is it unlikely that a true experiment could be performed?D) How many different groups of participants were there?

Explanation / Answer

A)- The study type is quasi experiment. In this study only working hour was manipulated but the external factors were not in control setting.

B)- The independent variables of this study were working time and schedules of the work. The researcher wanted to see the impact of the working time and the schedules on the dependent variable. The dependent variable of this study was the production level of the company. The researcher was intended to know the impact of independent variables on the productivity level of the company.

C)- In true experiment study, there should be complete control over the extraneous variables, so that they can not affect the dependent variables. In this study there was no control over the extraneous variables. This is why this study can not be considered as true experiment.

D)- There were two groups for the fab A plant and two groups for Fab B plant, one was control group and other was treatment group in each fab plant.

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