Industrial/Organizational Psychology

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Statistics Assignment

Complete Part 1 of the Inferential Research and Statistics Project.
Use the provided data set to complete Part 1.
Inferential Research and Statistics Project
Part 1
Select one of the following scenarios based on your particular field of interest in psychology:
·         Industrial/Organizational Psychology:
o    A few months ago, the upper management at a large corporation decided they wanted to make major changes in the organization. Leadership is concerned that employees may be resistant to the change, and they want to find out if there is a change management method that would help employees accept change more effectively and keep employee satisfaction high. Two methods they have considered are the ADKAR Framework and the Prosci Change Management Methodology. The company wants to implement a small change in two departments before they make any major organization changes and would like to test the methods. The corporation uses the Devine Company to measure employee satisfaction with an anonymous survey.
·         Applied Psychology:
o    A large medical facility is experiencing too many missed appointments in its primary and specialty care clinics. The facility has noticed that not all patients respond well to reminder calls regarding follow-up appointments. Some patients do not answer calls and do not seem to respond to voice mail requesting they call the facility. The result is that many follow up appointments are missed. Management has read articles that people respond very well to text messages and would like to see which method provides the least amount of missed appointments. Missed appointments are tracked in the facility database on a monthly basis.
·         General Psychology:
o    Clinicians at a small clinic have been introduced to a new method to treat post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in their clients for veterans. Research indicates that virtual reality (VR) is a highly effective treatment option for patients with PTSD. Currently, the clinic uses only cognitive processing therapy (CPT) with their patients suffering from PTSD. The clinicians would like to find out whether VR therapy has different results from CPT therapy. The measure used by the clinic to measure PTSD symptoms is the Combat Exposure Scale. Both therapies need to be applied for a minimum of 12 weeks to be effective.
Write a 525- to 750-word paper that addresses the following for your chosen scenario:
·         Clearly define the problem or issue you are addressing. Provide a brief background of any research you have found that might affect your research hypothesis.
·         Create a research hypothesis based on the information provided in each scenario. You have been given a data set (Excel document) with two sets of interval data (just the numbers, as you must decide what they represent, such as method A results or method B results). This means you are going to test one thing against another, such as which method works best (step 1 of the steps to hypothesis testing). State the null and research hypotheses. Explain whether these hypotheses require a one-tailed test or two-tailed test, and explain your rationale.
·         Describe the sample you will use. Sample size will be 30 for each group, which are provided in your data set. Explain what type of sampling you selected.
·         Do you think you would also collect some descriptive data, such as gender, age, or shift? Why do you think it makes sense to collect descriptive data?
Format your paper according to APA guidelines.

The Wilcox & Keselman (2003) article from this week’s electronic readings discusses two problems with measures of central tendency: skewness of the data and outliers. Discuss each of these issues and how they affect measures of central tendency.

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Statistics Worksheet psy/315

Week 2 Practice Worksheet
Provide a response to the following questions.
1.     The Wilcox & Keselman (2003) article from this week’s electronic readings discusses two problems with measures of central tendency: skewness of the data and outliers. Discuss each of these issues and how they affect measures of central tendency.
2.     For the following scores, find the mean, median, and mode. Which would be the most appropriate  measure for this data set? You may use Microsoft® Excel® data anlysis to compute these statistics.  You may copy your output from Microsoft® Excel® into this worksheet.
2, 2, 0, 5,1, 4,1, 3, 0, 0, 1, 4, 4, 0,1, 4, 3, 4, 2, 1
3.     Based on the scale of measurement for each variable listed below, which measure of central tendency is most appropriate for describing the data?
a.     The time (in years) it takes a sample of students to graduate college.
b.     The blood type (such as A, B, AB, or O) of a group of participants.
c.     The rankings of college undergraduate academic programs.
4.     How do the sample mean and the population mean differ? What is the symbol for each type of mean?
5.     An expert reviews a sample of 10 scientific articles (n = 10) and records the following numbers of error in each article: 0, 4, 2, 8, 2, 3, 1, 0, 5, and 7. Compute the SS, the variance, and the standard deviation for this sample using the definitional and computational formulas. You may use Microsoft® Excel® data anlysis to compute these statistics. You may copy your output from Microsoft® Excel® into this worksheet.
6.     A psychologist interested in political behavior measured the square footage of the desks in the official office of four U.S. governors and of four CEOs of major U.S. corporations. The figures for the governors were 44, 36, 52, and 40 square feet. The figures for the CEOs were 32, 60, 48, 36 square feet.
a.     Figure the means and standard deviations for the each group: governors and CEOs.
b.     Explain, to a person who has never had a course in statistics, what you have done.
c.     Note the ways in which the means and standard deviations differ, and speculate on the possible meaning of these differences, presuming they are representative of U.S. governors and large corporations’ CEOs in general.
7.     Radel and colleagues (2011) conducted a study of how feeling overly controlled makes you desire—even unconsciously—more freedom. In their study, 52 Canadian undergraduates played a video game in a laboratory and were randomly assigned to one1 of the following:
·         An automony deprivation condition, in which they were told to follow instructions precisely, constantly given instructions over a loudspeaker, and carefully observed on everything they did.
·         A neutral condition, which was much more laid back.
After this activity, they were asked to do a lexical decision task (a standard approach for measuring unconscious responses), in which they were shown a series of words and nonwords in random order and had to press C if it was a real word or N if not. Half of the real words were related to autonomy (such as freedom and choice), and half were neutral (such as whisper and hammer). The key focus of the study was on how long it took people to press the button (response latency) for each kind of real word, averaged over the many words of each type. The table below shows the mean and standard deviation across the participants of these four categories of results. For example, 782 milliseconds (thousandths of a second) is the average time it took participants in the autonomy-deprived condition to respond to the autonomy-related words, and 211 is the standard deviation across the 26 participants’ average response time in that condition. Explain the numbers in this table to a person who has never taken a course in statistics. (Be sure to explain some specific numbers, as well as the general principle of the mean and standard deviation.) For your interest, the pattern of results shown here supported the researchers’ hypothesis: “Relative to a neutral instructional climate, a controlling climate thwarting the need for autonomy…enhanced accessibility for autonomy-related words” (p. 924).
8.     A researcher records the levels of attraction for various fashion models among college students. He finds that mean levels of attraction are much higher than the median and the mode for these data.
a.     What is the shape of the distribution for the data in this study?
b.     What measure of central tendency is most appropriate for describing these data? Why?
9.     An organizational psychologist measures levels of job satisfaction in a sample of 30 participants. To measure the variance of job satisfaction, it is calculated that the SS = 120 for this sample.

  1. What are the degrees of freedom for the variance?
  2. Compute the variance and standard deviation (you will have to do this one by hand).

10.  State the three empirical rules for a normal distribution with any mean and varaince.

Explain how and why organizations might use job descriptions to enhance the value of employees and departments.

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Psych employee paper 1

How can a job description secure your future with a company, improve the likelihood of increased pay, improve the likelihood of promotion, and help you better understand your fit for the role to be filled?
Using your textbook, the Argosy University online library resources, and the Internet, research the value and uses of job descriptions for employees, managers, and the human resource (HR) department.
Tasks:

  • For your current job or a previous job, evaluate and explain the value of a job description from the perspectives listed below.
    • An employee performing a selected job
    • The manager or supervisor of that employee
    • The human resource (HR) department
  • Explain how and why organizations might use job descriptions to enhance the value of employees and departments.

Your final product should be a 2- to 3-page Microsoft Word document. Apply current APA standards for writing style to your work. All written assignments and responses should follow APA rules for attributing sources. Please use a minimum of 2 references.

How does the diversity policy address Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) and Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) regulations?

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Psych employee 2

Most, if not all, companies have a diversity policy pertaining to recruitment. Legal requirements also tend to dictate how an organization approaches diversity in recruitment.
In this module, use the Argosy University online library resources and the Internet to conduct research on the use and effectiveness of diversity policies in organizational recruitment efforts. Choose a company from the Internet or use a company that you currently work with or have previously worked with and answer the following questions:

  • How does the diversity policy address Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) and Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) regulations?
  • What other standards are used?
  • What information is collected during the recruitment and application process to ensure compliance?
  • How could the policy be improved?
  • Did you read any information that surprised you? If so, what was it?
  • Your response should rely on at least two sources from additional professional literature—articles from peer-reviewed journals and relevant textbooks. Write in a clear, concise, and organized manner; demonstrate ethical scholarship in accurate representation and attribution of sources (i.e., APA); and use accurate spelling, grammar, and punctuation.