Research statistics

Question

A business study conducted by researchers showed a positive correlation between employee engagement and customer satisfaction. This is an example of what type of research?

 

 

Choose one:

 

Descriptive

Explanatory

Experimental

Predictive

Reporting

Answer 1

Hi Mik;

I believe this is explanatory research as the investigator is attempting to establish a positive or negative correlation between employee engagement and customer satisfaction.

 

It is not experimental in that the investigator did not ask of customer service representatives to increase or decrease the quality or quantity of their engagements with customers.

 

It is not predictive because it does not appear that anything, such as profits, is attempting to be predicted.

 

I do not know what reporting research is.

Answer 2

It is difficult to say what type of research since there is no information provided as to how the data was collected. The result would appear to be descriptive since, again, since there is no other information provided. The correlation coefficient is a measure of the linear relationship between the variables. Without other inofrmatioon we cannot know whther or not the relationship is linear or not. Also we have no information about cpotential confounding variables. So at best the result is descriptive.

Answer 3

Since a positive correlation means that as one variable increases (or decreases), the second variable does likewise, Based on this information I would choose Predictive as the correct answer.  Some examples are given below:

 

Number of hours worked vs money made:

the more you work , the more you make so it is positive correlation.

SAT and GPA test scores:

Students with higher GPAs usually preform best on the SAT.

 

Salary vs Education:

Your earning potential will most likely increase as your education increases.

 

Employee engagement and customer satisfaction:

Customers satisfaction increases as employee engagement increases.

 

 

Answer 4

This problem looks more like a descriptive (statisctics) research to me.

It is a case of bivariate analysis, meaning with two different samples : 1)employee engagement and 2)customer satisfaction.

This kind of analysis includes finding the measure of dependence or linear correlation, positive or negative, between the two variables.

The correlation may be strong (close to 1 in absolute value) or weak  (close to 0). But whatever the number is, a correlation does not necessarily indicate a causation or an explanation.

Usually, more statistical tools are used to assert the degree of probable causation between two variables.

 

 

Jean-Sebastien R.

Queens, NY