StatisticsII

Data Collection

Maria Castro, Jose Collado, Joyce Esquilin,

Josean Quintana, and Ephraim Torres

Quantitative Analysis for Business - QNT / 351

May 21, 2015

University of Phoenix

Overview-problem, Purpose, Research Question, and Hypothesis

As consultants to Ballard Integrated Managed Services Inc. (BIMS) we are focused on the overview-problem of the employees’ morale and the effect on the company’s operation. BIMS is a company that is committed to providing food and hospitality services while also providing housekeeping and food services to other corporations and institutions. The three division within the company have a significant function and represent the company’s goals and interests. The General Manager, Barbara Tucker, is responsible for the three divisions and the staff management. Ms. Tucker has noticed there is a serious situation of an increase in employee turnover within the last four months. There has been an increase of 4% up to 9% in the annual turnover rate. The department heads also noticed there was a situation with the turnover rate and morale of the employees. Still the department heads were unable to tell the general manager the “why” of the situation.

Purpose – As General Manager Ms. Tucker must find the answer as to why her employee’s motivation has been deteriorating and the amount of complaints is on the rise. The general manager has chosen to meet with her department heads and look for a possible solution to the situation.

Research questions – The Human Resources Manager suggested to the General Manager on surveying the employees in order to identify the decrease in the employees’ morale. The survey included questions about the employee’s feelings working for the company, and other issues that affected their morale.

Hypothesis – With only 17% of the company’s employees completing the survey to the Human Resources Manager, which is a common rate of return, there has to be additional efforts made to encourage the employees to generate more useable information.

Data Collection Instruments

The survey is based on quantitative evaluations that will help to generate an evaluation hypothesis; strengthening the design of survey questionnaires and expand or clarify the quantitative evaluations. The survey is the data collection instrument that will assist in identifying the feedback of the level of satisfaction of the BIMS employees.

Identify types of data collected

The data collection is an important aspect of any research study and ultimately leads to invalid results; the method used was the quantitative data collection. The data gathered was used with linkers scaling that is a one-dimensional scaling process. This method plays an important role in impacting the evaluation by providing information useful to understand the processes that were used to identify the reason for the increase in employee’s turnovers.

How data is collected

Recording and organizing data may take many different forms, depending on the kind of information you need to collect. The data was collected by surveys; this collection process was necessary to ensure the data gather are both defined and correct. The following decisions were based on the employee’s turnover, and the survey represents the level of satisfaction of the employees. This data collection was related to how we are planning to analyze and use the information gathered from all sources and observations.

Levels of measurement

Ballard Integrated Managed services Inc. recently decided to conduct a survey of its employees to determine the main cause of the high turnover rate. The company has four main divisions where they have allocated their employees, depending on their qualification levels; these include housekeeping, food service, general cleaning and physical plant maintenance. The divisions in the company are the variables used in the case study to determine the real cause of turnover rate.

Evaluating the levels of measurements used by these variables depend on the description of the division. The housekeeping division entails providing conducive rooms and environment for the patients thus the extent of the service rendered can be quantified as an interval level of measurement. This is where the services to the patients can be ordered although no distinction can be made. The food service division is responsible for the provision of daily meals which can be properly measured by the ratio level of measurement. In terms of the number of times the food is offered and the ratio of the food given to the patients.

General cleaning division, on the other hand, refreshes hospital rooms, replaces towels, linens changing and performs bathrooms sanitization. These activities can be well described by the ratio level of measurements. If the cleaning is not done or changing of towels and linens, the worker would have done zero job; thus general cleaning division falls under ratio level of measurement. Activities in the physical plant maintenance include repairing equipment and replacing them, cleaning other areas not handled by the employees in other divisions. This division falls under the ordinal level of measurement in that the various activities can be ordered although the extent of one equipment failure to another cannot be quantified. Ballard Integrated Managed Services Inc. can be well categorized in terms of the four measurement levels in order to determine where to categorize each division.

Code and clean the data

“The method used was the Likers Scaling, which is a one-dimensional scaling procedure. Where at first the definition of what is trying to measure is established.” ("Likers Scaling", 2006). First we must know what is affecting the morale of the employees that is causing the increase in the workers turnover. The average turnover rate is from 55% to 60%, but BIMS is experimenting 64% or 4% over the rate.

The next step is to set the scale of the items that scale goes running from one to five where five said is highly positive, and 1 said is negative. The questions asked the workers about their point of view of their work environments, hour’s period, training quality, compensation, supervisors’ treatment, internal communication, and security on the job. The design of the survey is to apply numerical values that represent levels of satisfactions of the employees about specific questions. This goes to help BIMS to identify the reasons for the increase employee’s turnover and performance decrease ("Coding Data from the Instrument", 2013). .

To clean the data, the inputs errors has to be fixed. The first error to be eliminated is the zero on the total of answered questions because the scale was from one to five. Those code zero answers cannot be counted on the total of the questionnaires received. The second error to be corrected is the answers with the code number six instead of five. The offices support staff typed an error by changing some of the codes five by the code six. This must be corrected to show the correct code. The results can only show codes from one to five. As soon as the data is coded and cleaned it can be analyzed and reviewed in many different ways. A spreadsheet from Excel is created to produce the information to compute the mean, median, and mode values for the respective questions.

Conclusion

The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines conclusion as; “a final decision or judgment: an opinion or decision that is formed after a period of thought or research” ("Conclusion / Definition of Conclusion by Merriam-Webster", 2015).

We draw conclusions every day about incidents we witness, the information we gather or about what we read. What is the source where this information is coming from? Is it fact or fiction?

It is easier to draw a conclusion from non-fiction sources. These facts are presented and backed up by the specific data that was collected from the BIMS Employee Survey.

The lesson learned here was; how get data from the BIMS Employee Survey of which will provide us with factual information. This information comes directly from the source (the employees) which will give us a quantitative identification that will provide a better understanding of the employee’s morale status.

Being able to collect, identify the data as quantitative, identify the levels of measurement of each of the variables, code and clean the data collect is what will provide us to reach the new information needed. This new information will reveal a better understanding of the turnover rate of each division and how to evaluate the employees’ morale status.

References

Foster, J. J. (2006). Understanding and using advanced statistics. London: SAGE Publications.

Morris, A. S. (2001). Measurement and instrumentation principles. Oxford[England: Butterworth-Heinemann.

Likers Scaling. (2006). Retrieved from http://www.socialresearchmethods.

Coding Data from the Instrument. (2013). Retrieved from http://korbedpsych.com

McClave, J., Benson, P.G., & Sincich, T. (2014). Statistics for Business Economics (11th ed.). Retrieved from The University of Phoenix eBook

Conclusion / Definition of conclusion by Merriam-Webster. (2015). Retrieved from http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/conclusion.