Statistics paper_990 words due 12hrs

Simple Linear Correlation Statistical Test:

Employee Empowerment & Service Quality

Introduction

This research proposal will seek to answer the research question that states, “What is the effect of employee empowerment on service quality in an organization?”. This is a question of interest as many organizations today are developing strategies towards ensuring that their employees are well empowered in order for the organizations to be sustainable and remain on top in a highly competitive market. Employees are a very important component in any organization as they are the ones who are directly involved with the organization’s activities and service provision, as well being in direct contact with the consumers or customers of the particular services offered by the organization (Rao & Chandra, 2013). Therefore, the welfare and well-being of these employees is of great concern to the organization so as to maintain and improve the quality of service that they offer.

The null hypothesis (H0) states that there is no statistical significance between employee empowerment and service quality in an organization, whereas the alternative hypothesis (H1) states that there is statistical significance between the two variables of employee empowerment and service quality in an organization (Shi & Tao, 2008).

Methods

The study participants will comprise of employees from private financial firms such as banks, insurance companies, and credit and savings facilities in the town of Seattle, America. 10 organizations were selected randomly with a total population of 940 employees. A sample size of 141 participants will be selected for the study from among all the employees of the 10 selected organizations which represents 15% of the total population. According to Nachimias, D.and Nachimias, C.F. (1996), this is considered an adequate size for study. The participants will comprise of both male and female employees who are not in the higher management levels in the organizations they work for. Also, the employees selected should have worked in the organization for not less than two years. the study participants will be selected using the probabilistic stratified random sampling method. This will involve the employees being put into groups depending on the number of years they have worked in the organization, like 2-3 years, 3-5 years, 5-7 years, and more than 7 years. The members from each group will then be selected randomly. This will ensure that the sample is representative and it consists of members from each group (Ardilly, Jang & Tille, 2006).

Procedures

This research study comprises of two variables, that is, the independent variable which is employee empowerment, and the dependent variable which is service quality.

Employee empowerment will involve variables three key aspects which are training, rewards, and management support. The scale of measurement for employee empowerment and its three aspects is ordinal. Also, service quality will be measured using the ordinal scale. Both the independent and the dependent variables are characteristically continuous in nature. Employee empowerment is a categorical variable and the dependent variable of service quality is also categorical (Janke & Tinsley, 2005). For example, you could correlate a person's age with their blood sugar levels. Here, the units are completely different; age is measured in years and blood sugar level measured in mmol/L (a measure of concentration). Indeed, the calculations for Pearson's correlation coefficient were designed such that the units of measurement do not affect the calculation. In turn, thus allowing the innate correlation coefficient to be comparable and not influenced by the units of the variables used (Sukal, 2013).

According to Rao & Chandra (2013), employee empowerment in an organization can be defined as the process of giving employees the opportunity to have their input and control over their work, allowing them a certain level of autonomy and even involving them in the very important responsibility of decision-making in an organization. Employee empowerment will be measured by examining three key areas of training for the employees by the organization, rewards by the organization towards the employees, and the level of support offered to the employees by the management. Service quality refers to the assessment of how well a service that has been delivered by an organization or business conforms to the customer’s needs and expectations (Rao & Chandra, 2013). This variable of service quality will be measured using a set of five dimensions as defined by the SERVQUAL measurement instrument. These dimensions are: tangibles, reliability, responsiveness, assurance, and empathy.

These are used to measure the gap between the expectations of customers and their perception of the actual services delivered by the organization (Rao & Chandra, 2013).

Results

Simple linear correlation refers to a measure of the degree to which two variables vary together, or a measure of the intensity of the association between two variables, the independent and the dependent variables. This test has been chosen for this study and is appropriate because the study seeks to establish the association that exists between the two variables which are employee empowerment and service quality in an organization. This test is therefore appropriate as it will clearly test and demonstrate whether there exists any statistical significance between employee empowerment and service quality (Yang, 2010).

The simple linear correlation statistical test has the following assumptions: level of measurement for each variable either ordinal or nominal and for the correlation test both variables should be continuous, related pairs of variables, absence of outliers in either variable as having outliers can skew the results of the correlation, linearity, and homoscedasticity which refers to the shape of the values formed by the scatterplot and the distance between the points to that straight line. These assumptions will be addressed in this study in that both the independent and dependent variables are continuous and also there will be no outliers in either variable (Janke & Tinsley, 2005).

The results of this study will provide information on whether organizations are conducting employee empowerment through the three key aspects of interest which are training, rewards, and supportive management. This information will enable the researcher to determine whether the employees under study are empowered or not.

The study will also provide information on the service quality offered by the organization and how the level of employee empowerment in an organization affects the service quality offered. This information will assist the researcher regarding the hypothesis conclusion, whether to reject the null hypothesis and accept the alternative hypothesis (Shi & Tao, 2008). The parameter being measure is P (rho) and is estimated by the statistic r, the correlation coefficient. r can range from -1 to 1 and the confidence levels for the study will be 95% for the Pearson’s correlation coefficient r effect size. This means that the population mean will be included within the ranges of 95% of the confidence intervals of the mean calculated from the sampled data with a 95% probability. This method is a Correlation technique used for investigating the relationship between two quantitative, continuous variables, for example, age and blood pressure. Pearson's correlation coefficient (r) is a measure of the strength of the association between the two variables. The assumption identified in this study and the use of the simple linear correlation test is that there are no outliers in either variable and that there are related pairs in the variables. Using this statistical test, conclusions of whether an association and statistical significance exists between employee empowerment and service quality in an organization can be made. This conclusion can be clearly drawn from the results of the study. The results of this study are very important and significant in that they are the ones that assist in determining the outcome of the hypothesis that are being tested. They help in either rejecting the null hypothesis or accepting the alternative hypothesis in the study (Yang, 2010). Within the guise of simple linear correlation statistical tests, there are several questions that input through variable analysis.

References

Ardilly, P., Jang, L., & Tille, Y. (2006). Sampling methods: exercises and solutions. New York, NY: Springer.

Janke, S., & Tinsley, F. (2005). Introduction to linear models and statistical inference. Hoboken, Nj: Wiley.

Rao, A., & Chandra, S. (2013). The Little Book of Big Customer Satisfaction Measurement. New Delhi: SAGE Publications.

Shi, N., & Tao, J. (2008). Statistical hypothesis testing. Singapore: World Scientific Pub.

Sukal, M. (2013). Research methods: Applying statistics in research. San Diego, CA:

Bridgepoint Education, Inc.

Yang, K. (2010). Making sense of statistical methods in social research. Los Angeles: Sage.