Comm 215 Case Section E FALL 2015: Description
of Case and Questions to be Addressed.
A financial institution is collecting data to better understand the
profiles of its current employees. Such information would be essential for 1)
an evaluation of the current hiring practice; 2) understanding the mechanism of
determining salary; 3) looking into possible discrimination against certain
gender and or age groups in order to reflect socially acceptable values with respect to equity in the
work place. Also, the company is particularly aware that while market
factor efficiencies may support wage structures that some employees may be
inclined to exploit the laws to their advantage. Thus in order to protect itself from hazard
related to future lawsuits, the company wishes to gather data that would
provide information that would enable it to test and analyze the fairness of
its practices or otherwise. In particular, management wants to determine and
report on whether any differences observed in salary between gender categories
and or age groupings are due to factors that might not be socially acceptable;
as opposed to relative comparative factor efficiency in the market. Management,
over the history of the organization had collected and recorded data on the
following variables below.
NSAL: Salary at the
time of study
SSAL: Salary at the
time of hiring
SEX: 0 = male; 1 =
female
SENIOR: Number of
months with the company
AGE (in months) at
time of hire
EXP: Months of work
experience
EDU: 1 = high
school graduate; 2 = some college; 3 = college graduate
Data on the above variables are obtained for 111 employees (See data
on the “data” worksheet on Moodle: W2015 Case Data). A preliminary
study based on the data by students on a stage from the Mathematics Department at the local University was quite ambiguous as to whether
the company was in compliance with the laws and social norms of the society. Management wanted to have a second opinion and
contracted you (Your group) to conduct a review of the study.
PART I
First, your group is asked to do a literature review of the
literature available on similar studies and determine whether the variables
used by the Mathematics stagiaires are
appropriate and broad enough in coverage to effectively determine whether
its employment practices, its organizational structure, market strategies and
administration practices make it a
leading company in fair employment practices. The company is also aware that there
are many issues related to data collection (See Text, Groebner, pages 12-13) that can lead to biases and errors in the
accuracy of the data with significant negative impact on the conclusion
reached. In particular, the company wishes to you/group to determine whether the
methods used to collect the data meet the
requirements for external and internal validity. While the company realizes that an extensive
analysis of how to measure the magnitude
of bias and how to reduce bias
and other data collection problems may be beyond the scope of your research group, it would like you to point out any
flaws in the data collected by the Mathematic Stagiaires, and pose
questions about the potential for bias
and determine what steps, based on the topics and concepts taught in this
course, can be taken to reduce biased effects.
To assist your review read
Section 1.2 of your text (Groebner pages 7-9) selectively: indicate what
data collection methods have been used by the research team of stagiaires
and comment on the appropriateness. What kind of study is this, an experimental
design study or observational?
Part II: Data Summary and Analysis
1)
Use
appropriate descriptive statistics to summarize the following data and comment
on their underlying distributions. For qualitative data, your answer should at
least include supporting relative frequencies tables, and or graphics. Your presentations should entail test for outliers and a written
analysis of the changes in the distribution when adjustments are made for
outliers: comment on the location, shape and skewness of the distribution before
and after making adjustment for outliers. Show the results and state the
implications of any changes for the outcome of your analysis
2)
Using the
most appropriate statistical methods, compare the distributions for the salaries of men and women at the time of the
study, before and after any adjustments are made in the data.
3)
Does
your analysis support the belief that there is a relationship between the age
at the time of hiring and the salary at the time of hiring, age and sex
discrimination. Support you answer with appropriate analytical, graphic tools
and/or descriptive measures. What are the implications of your conclusions for
the findings of the study?
4)
The
Mathematics Stagiaires recognize the disparities in the salaries between males
and females working for the company. But in their report they supported a
management report which stated that female salaries were catching up to males and that at the time of
the study no more than 50 percent of the female employees had incomes below the
average NSAL for the company as a whole. Test the validity of the claim and
comment on the statement that female salaries are catching up to males. What
are the research implications for your conclusions?
Part III: Final Report
As
stated in the project description, management is concern about the legal
and social implications of the existence
issues related to gender equity or economic exploitation based on age
differences. Does your group’s analysis and revised review support the conclusions of the math stagiaires
that management should be concerned about being at risk of legal action and
social sanctions. Comment and please support your conclusions by the
appropriate statistical analysis and
scatter plots. What recommendations
would you make in public
relations strategy, human resource management and data gathering, presentation
and analysis to address some of the concerns expressed by management.
SEE FILE “CASE STUDY
INSTRUCTIONS,FALL 2015 MOODLE
