2- 100-150 word responses

Discussion Question 2: What are the essential differences among nominal, ordinal, interval, and ratio scales? How do these differences affect the statistical analysis techniques we can use?

Discussion Question 3: Following are six questions. Evaluate each on its strengths and weaknesses.

a.) Do you read National Geographic magazine regularly?

b.) What percentage of your time is spent asking for information from others in your organization?

c.) When did you first start chewing gum?

d.) How much discretionary buying power do you have each year?

e.) Do you think the president is doing a good job now?

RESPOND TO THE REPONSES BELOW THAT DICUSS THE QUESTIONS ABOVE: 100-150 WORDS FOR EACH RESPONSE TOTAL ASSIGNMENT SHOULD BE 200-300 WORDS

RESPONSES STUDENT 1 (MO) (100-150 WORDS)

Question 2

What are the essential differences among nominal, ordinal, interval, and ratio scales? How do these differences affect the statistical analysis techniques we can use?

Nominal scales simply group answers into categories. Example: Peaches are labeled “P” and apples are labeled “A”. Ordinal scales rank order but there is not a certain distance from one position to the next. Example: If you prefer apples select “1”, if you prefer peaches select “2”. This can measure dispersion and therefore greater than, less than, or equal to. Interval data captures distance from neutral or distance from the next tested variable. Example: Rate your preference for an apple from zero to five. Rate your preference for a peach from zero to five. This study would result in how much greater one preference is over the other. Interval data results allow for a central tendency by using median and mode. Ratio scales take it a step further and give us the greatest measurement reliability. Example: If your diet consisted of peaches and apples, what percentage of your diet would consist of peaches? From compiled ratio data, we can measure classification, order, distance, and unique origin to measure dispersion within a fixed quantity of 10 or 100 usually. Because ratio data is on a fixed scale, it is the ultimate comparative tool with many uses in business research measurements.

Question 3

a. Do you read National Geographic magazine regularly?

The question is understandable up until “regularly” which is subjective and up for interpretation. What does regularly mean? Weekly, monthly, yearly? This will lead to confused survey subjects and poor answer results for analysis. The question is precise and impactful up to that point. The answer could only be yes, no, or unknown which allows for easy measurement.

b. What percentage of your time is spent asking for information from others in your organization?

This answer would result in the highest measurable data point, ratio data. The question is direct and easy to understand. However, “asking for information” could be face to face, via telephone, intercompany text chat, or email. Is waiting for a response part of time spent asking for information? "Percentage of your time" in relation to a workday or 24-hour period? This would be a difficult metric for me to gauge and answer, I would have chosen a different measurement scale, “how many minutes per day on average” may be more appropriate. The confusion would cause erratic results that would not result in quality research.

c. When did you first start chewing gum?

Chewing gum for the first time is generally an insignificant part of one’s life and memory decay quickly becomes a factor. Additionally, the act of “first start chewing gum” could mean a first piece of gum ever, first piece of gum purchased, or habit of buying packs of gum. There is strength in the fact that this would be a one dimensional scale to measure a date for all responses.

d. How much discretionary buying power do you have each year?

This would take a higher vocabulary to understand what “discretionary buying power” means, it is better to use common language. Necessities is subjective to even deduct to get a discretionary result. Food, water, shelter, and clothing are often coined as necessities. Therefore, do we include debt payments or internet bill into the equation? “Buying power” could mean what I am willing to spend, what I am able to spend, or somewhere in between. What does “each year” mean? This question has a behavioral time frame too inclusive and generalized. Buying power since income was earned or an average of discretionary cash on average in any given year? This is a double-barreled question if the respondent is to answer a dollar amount for “each year”.

e.) Do you think the president is doing a good job now?

People generally have a positive or negative response to this easy-to-understand question that is used to scale their attitude. It is one of the most common questions in societies and it is talking about now, not what they have done, but what they are doing now. The question could be more specific. For example: Is the president doing a good or poor job of foreign trade policy now? By using the term “good job” the question is pre biased and leads the responder to think that the president is doing a good job, so this question will get more positive responses than an unbiased question.

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RESPONE Student 2 (EK) (100- 150 WORDS )

Question 2

Before discussing the differences of these four scales, we must define each. According to Schindler (2019), nominal scales collect information on a variable that naturally or by design can be grouped into two or more categories that are mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive (p. 229). Ordinal scales “include the characteristics of the nominal scale plus an indication of order” (Schindler, 2019, p. 232). Interval scales have everything the last two have, plus the ability to incorporate the concept of equality of interval. Lastly, Ratio scales include all the powers of the last three, plus the provision for absolute zero or origin (Schindler, 2019, p. 233). Based on these descriptions, we can say that these are all pretty similar, but the key differences are the abilities that each have as they stack on top of each other from nominal to ratio scales.

These differences affect the statistical analysis techniques we can use in a few ways. If we are only looking for classification, we can use nominal scales. If we only need classification and order, we can use ordinal scales. If we need distance on top of this, we can use interval scales. Lastly, having classification, order, distance, and natural origin would require ratio scales to be utilized. Depending on the needs we have for characteristics of data, we will be limited to using techniques specific to each scale type based on what we need in the data. For example, if we are using nonparametric methods, we would be limited to ordinal scales. While interval and ratio would be catch-all scales that have more functionality than ordinal scales, we would still be locked into using ordinal scales based on what technique we use.

Question 3

Following are six questions. Evaluate each on its strengths and weaknesses.

a.) Do you read National Geographic magazine regularly?

b.) What percentage of your time is spent asking for information from others in your organization?

c.) When did you first start chewing gum?

d.) How much discretionary buying power do you have each year?

e.) Do you think the president is doing a good job now?

A. This question is good with how specific it is. We are avoiding any question about other magazines the participant might read. If the researcher wants a yes or no answer, that is exactly what they will get. Unfortunately, regularly can be subjective. Regularly could be anywhere between reading a couple issues a year to reading every one multiple times. The researcher could acquire a lot more data if they left it as a more open-ended question or included multiple frequencies of reading, like sometimes, never, etc. Additionally, this format leaves room for participant errors if they are unsure of what “regularly” would mean to the researcher.

B. Out of all the proposed questions above, I believe that this is the best one. It does a good job of asking for a percentage amount of time that can easily be compared to other responses. There is very little in question that could cause participant error. It also eliminates the question of asking people outside the organization like friends, family members, or even clients for assistance on various things. It could be improved in a few small ways. This could specify being within work hours. Additionally, asking for “information” could be perceived as actual data instead of assistance or asking a question. C. I am not seeing many strengths with this question. This question does eliminate other items like mints and mouthwash if people chew gum for breath freshening, or things like sunflower seeds for a chewing habit. The big issue with this question is it does not specify the value desired or the current age of the participants. A participant could say “a long time ago” or give a number like “5 years ago” for example. Even if the participant provides a numeric value, would the researcher prefer an age of the participant when they started? A better question to ask would be “how old were you when you first started chewing gum?”. D. This is another question with few strengths, if any. Even as an MBA student, I am unsure of what the question is even asking. Someone with no business background may have even more trouble digesting the question. Even if they were to understand what was being asked, how to you quantify this? Is the researcher looking for a dollar amount? Number of days? Neither? Additionally, this may change year-to-year, making it more difficult to find a value for this question. E. This question is not as bad as some of the others. It is a close-ended question but also leaves room for participants to elaborate if the researcher wanted to include an open-ended portion of this question as a follow-up. This question does seem a bit biased at the moment. They asked if the president is doing a good job, but how would the participants react if they asked if he was doing a bad job? This question should be framed as “how well do you think the president is doing now?” or at least removing the adjective and leaving that up to the participant to provide.

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