Question.3258 - The Case of the Accountants The president of a large accounting company is required to send employees back to school each year to catch up on the latest changes to tax laws. Each employee is sent to a two-week school and then must pass a competency exam showing that they have learned what they need to know. The president, although realizing the need for ongoing education, has long complained that sending employees away for two weeks is unproductive. Finally, after years of suffering, he sets out to find a better way of educating the employees. He soon discovers that several institutions are offering online versions of the required courses and exclaims: "This is perfect! Now, my employees can work all day and then study online at night. It's the best of both worlds". While describing his plan to the accounting managers, one of the chief accountants asks the president if the quality of the online schools is equal that of the traditional schools. "After all," she says, "how do we know what we're getting? Maybe we should investigate this a little further before we commit all of our accountants to this plan". The president sees the validity of her argument and comes up with a plan. "I know what we'll do. Let's randomly choose half of our accountants to take the courses online and the other half can go to the regular schools. Once they come back, we'll see how the two groups compare on the competency examination". The company immediately goes about setting their plan into action! 1. What is the hypothesis that the company is investigating? 2. What is the independent variable? What are the levels of the independent variables? 3. What is the dependent variable? 4. Which statistical test would the company use to test their hypothesis? 5. For each of the sets of output below, what can you tell about the dependent variable? What decision would the president make? Case A: Variable Group Number Mean Standard Standard Error in Group Deviation of the Mean Score Online 10 84.10 5.2377 1.6563 Traditional 10 79.20 3.3267 1.0520 Levene Test t-test for the Equality of Means SCORE F p t Degrees of 1-tailed p 2-tailed p value value value Freedom value value Equal 2.700 0.118 Variances 2.497 18 .011 .022 Assumed Equal Variances Not 2.497 15.245 .012 .024 Assumed Case B: Variable Group Number Mean Standard Standard Error in Group Deviation of the Mean Score Online 10 84.10 5.2377 1.6563 Traditional 10 84.30 2.4518 0.7753 Levene Test t-test for the Equality of Means SCORE F p t Degrees of 1-tailed p 2-tailed p value value value Freedom value value Equal 7.20 .015 Variances .109 18 .4570 .914 Assumed Equal Variances Not .109 12.763 .4575 .915 Assumed Case C: Variable Group Number Mean Standard Standard Error in Group Deviation of the Mean Score Online 10 84.10 5.2377 1.6563 Traditional 10 93.30 1.8288 .5783 Levene Test t-test for the Equality of Means SCORE F p t Degrees of 1-tailed p 2-tailed p value value value Freedom value value Equal 10.32 .005 Variances 5.244 18 .000 .000 Assumed Equal Variances Not 5.244 11.162 .000 .000
Answer Below:
1) The hypothesis that the company is investigating is whether its employees would be more productive if they undergo traditional way of learning or online training. Traditional way of training states that the employees would be sent to a two-week school and after that they would have to pass a competency exam to prove that they have learned what they are supposed to know. Online training suggests that the employees can work all day and study online during night. So before the company enrolls all its employees to online training, it wants to make sure that the productivity of the company increases without compromising on the quality that the traditional schools give. 2) Independent variable is one on which the tester can have control, i.e., its values will be manipulated by the tester of hypothesis. Here the independent variable is the time that the employees can devote for training and learning so as to do well in competency exam. In traditional schools, the employees can devote full time in learning because they are off from work while in online training, the employees have a few hours, each day, in hand to study as they have to work all day and have to learn at night. 3) Dependant variable is one that depends on the independent variable. Here the dependant variable is the scores of the employees in the competency exam. 4) The company can use “Levene test for equality of variance” or “t-test for the Equality of means” to test its hypothesis. 5) For “Levene test,” if p-value is less than .05, the hypothesis is correct so Case B and Case C tells that the dependant variable is not significantly different, therefore the president would go for online training of its employees. But in Case A, the p value, 0.118>0.05 therefore it shows a significant difference in variance so the president would stick to the traditional school. For “t-test for the Equality of means,” if two tailed p-value is less than .05, the hypothesis is correct so Case A and Case C that the dependant variable is not significantly different, therefore the president would go for online training of its employees. But in Case B, the two-tailed p value, 0.914>0.05 therefore it shows a significant difference in variance so the president would stick to the traditional school.More Articles From Statistics
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