Page 140 - [Uma_Sekaran]_Research_methods_for_business__a_sk(BookZZ.org)

124 THE RESEARCH PROCESS

More women than men were favorably inclined toward the proposal (almost
2:1). Parents with two or more preschool children overwhelmingly desired
this; employees who did not belong to this category were opposed to the idea.

Employees over 50 years of age and those below 25 did not seem to favor this
scheme. However, women between 25 and 45 (a total of 45 women) seemed
to desire it the most.

The mean on the preference scale indicated for the child care facility by all
employees is rather low (1.5 on a 5-point scale), but the dispersion is rather
high, the standard deviation being 1.98. This indicates that there are some
who indicate a strong liking for the proposed project, while some are totally
against it.
The average preference indicated by women between the ages of 30 and 45
with children is the highest (4.75 on a 5-point scale) with very little disper-
sion (the standard deviation for this group of 42 women was .38). This is the
group that desires the on-site facility the most.
Introductory descriptive narratives in some research reports, as you might have
noticed, are drawn from government statistical publications such as the Bureau
of Labor Statistics, census, and the like, from which data are culled for presenta-
tion, as and when appropriate.

Hypotheses Testing
Studies that engage in hypotheses testing usually explain the nature of certain
relationships, or establish the differences among groups or the independence of
two or more factors in a situation. Examples of such studies are given below.
Hypothesis testing is undertaken to explain the variance in the dependent vari-
able or to predict organizational outcomes.

Example 6.5 A marketing manager wants to know if the sales of the company will increase if
he doubles the advertising dollars. Here, the manager would like to know the
nature of the relationship that can be established between advertising and sales
by testing the hypothesis: If advertising is increased, then sales will also go up.

Example 6.6 Given people’s tensions on the subject of purchase of guns in these days of crime
in cities big and small, a marketing researcher might be interested in predicting
the factors that would significantly account for the variance in people’s decision
to purchase guns. Here, the researcher would have theorized the factors that
would influence people’s decision to possess guns (through literature search and
interviews) and then test the hypothesis that four specific variables will signifi-
cantly account for the variance in people’s intention to buy a gun. Here again,
the researcher is interested in understanding and accounting for the variance in
the dependent variable—gun purchase—through hypothesis testing.