Research Project Design

15 December 2022

LUISS Guido Carli University

Department of Business and Management

Duration: 60 min
Type: closed book

Name:

Surname:

Student ID:

BEFORE STARTING THE EXAM, PLEASE CAREFULLY READ THE FOLLOWING

INSTRUCTIONS:

a) You MUST answer all questions.

b) Scores for each question appear in parentheses.

c) Should you want to write additional notes take the flipside of any page.
 BLOCK A – Short questions

1. A researcher estimates the following regression equation based on a sample of 2500

employees working for multinational company based in Switzerland:

𝑗𝑜𝑏 𝑠𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑠𝑓𝑎𝑐𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛𝑖 = 𝛽0 + 𝛽1 𝑠𝑎𝑙𝑎𝑟𝑦 + 𝛽2 𝑚𝑜𝑡𝑖𝑣𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 + 𝛽3 𝑐𝑜𝑚𝑚𝑢𝑡𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑡𝑖𝑚𝑒 + 𝛽4 𝑔𝑒𝑛𝑑𝑒𝑟𝑖 + 𝜀𝑖

𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝜀𝑖 𝑏𝑒𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑒𝑟𝑟𝑜𝑟 𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑚 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑔𝑒𝑛𝑑𝑒𝑟 𝑚𝑒𝑎𝑠𝑢𝑟𝑒𝑑 𝑎𝑠 1 = 𝑓𝑒𝑚𝑎𝑙𝑒 𝑎𝑛𝑑 0 = 𝑚𝑎𝑙𝑒,
𝑠𝑎𝑙𝑎𝑟𝑦 𝑚𝑒𝑎𝑠𝑢𝑟𝑒𝑑 𝑖𝑛 𝑘𝐸𝑈𝑅, 𝑚𝑜𝑡𝑖𝑣𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 𝑚𝑒𝑎𝑠𝑢𝑟𝑒𝑑 𝑜𝑛 5 𝑝𝑜𝑖𝑛𝑡 𝑎𝑔𝑟𝑒𝑒𝑚𝑒𝑛𝑡 𝑠𝑐𝑎𝑙𝑒 𝑤𝑖𝑡ℎ
ℎ𝑖𝑔ℎ𝑒𝑟 𝑣𝑎𝑙𝑢𝑒𝑠 𝑖𝑛𝑑𝑖𝑐𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑠𝑡𝑟𝑜𝑛𝑔𝑒𝑟 𝑎𝑔𝑟𝑒𝑒𝑚𝑒𝑛𝑡, 𝑐𝑜𝑚𝑚𝑢𝑡𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑡𝑖𝑚𝑒 𝑚𝑒𝑎𝑠𝑢𝑟𝑒𝑑 𝑖𝑛 𝑚𝑖𝑛𝑢𝑡𝑒𝑠

a) Propose one research question that could be studied estimating this equation (2 points)

b) What additional variables would you recommend to be included? Name at least 2

additional variables and briefly explain your rationale for including them! (2 points)

c) Assume the researcher calculates the results of the estimations, assume that all
necessary assumptions have been met and assume the researcher finds the following
values:
β1: 0.24, p=0.046
β2: 0.35, p=0.003
β3: 1.58, p=0.28
β4: 0.72, p=0.37

How would you interpret β2 and β3 with respect to job satisfaction? (2 points)

2. Explain the difference between variance and process studies! (2 points)

3. A firm offers different on-the-job trainings to its employees. The HR director wants to
know what training is most effective and what training should be stopped. Suggest a
research design that enables you to give advice to the HR director! (2 points)

4. You plan to conduct a process study of organizational change by following Company A

and Company B through a strategic renewal process – what method(s) would be
suitable? Comment on the study design, and on what kind of data you would like to
collect! (2 points)

5. What is a moderation effect? Define it and give an example! (2 points)

Block B – Scenario I

You are working for a large multinational company with more than 12000 employees worlwide.
The headquarter where you work is based in New York City, USA and is home to 800 employees.
The company has just been acquired and the new management wants to develop an idea of what
the morale and wellbeing of the employees is like.

1. What method would you use to design a study that can answer the questions the new
management is interested in? Briefly explain your rationale and write down a suitable
research question. Also comment on a suitable sampling method for your proposed
research question! (5 points)
 2. While you are doing a preparatory literature search for your own project you come across
a study presenting the following findings drawn from a sample of public sector employees:

Your attention is caught by the job satisfaction, burnout and exit intention variables.
a) Indicate the correct number and Value
interpret the relationship between: from
table Interpretation
i. Burnout & job satisfaction
(1.5 points)

ii. Burnout & exit intentions

(1.5 points)

iii. Job satisfaction & exit intentions

(1.5 points)
b) On what grounds could you
suggest that the variable in row 8
“negligent behavior” should be
excluded from the subsequent
analyses? Explain your rationale!
(2.5 points)
3. Before you are embarking on your own study you have checked the archives and you
found an analysis based your employer’s annual employee survey that dates back to 2016.
The results are displayed in the table below. You decided to take this to your supervisor.

(1)
Subjective Happiness
Gender -0.110
(-0.75)
Marital status 0.0443
(0.32)
Salary level 0.198*
(2.46)
Intrinsic Motivation 0.302**
(2.95)
Extrinsic Motivation 0.176
(1.71)
Performance -0.0366
(-0.76)
Physical wellbeing 0.0918
(1.56)
Working environment -0.0888
(-1.73)
Perceived Stress -0.169**
(-2.86)
Constant 1.838***
(5.10)
N 290
R-squared 0.498
F-value 30.62***
Notes: Gender is a dummy variable measured as (female=1,
male=0), Marital status is a dummy variable measured as
(married=1, single=0), performance is the result from the 2015
appraisal round and measured as (1= below expectations, 2=
meets expectations, 3= exceeds expectations), all other variables
are measured on 5-point Likert agreement scales where lower
values indicate disagreement and higher values indicate
agreement. t statistics in parentheses;
*
p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01, *** p < 0.001
Your supervisor is not very familiar with statistics and asks a couple of questions. Your task is to
answer his questions:

a. “I do not know what the values at the bottom of the table mean. Can you explain N,
R-squared and the F-value to me?” (2 points)

b. “I would like to propose an initiative for modernizing the office environment – does this
data support such an initiative?” (2 points)

c. “Based on these results, what is your recommendation to me?” (2 points)

Bonus question

The HR director has become aware of your work on morale and employee wellbeing and
therefore approaches you with a new request: He looks for advice on finding out what makes
employees join the organization’s pension fund. Ideally he would like the whole workforce to do
so, but currently only 63% of the workforce has registered for the pension fund.
He gives you a data set covering the years 2016-2022 containing the following variables:
Variable Measure
Pension fund joined Yes/no
Base salary USD
Bonus Received/not received
Family status Single – married – divorced-widowed
Number of children 0 – 1 – 2- 3 – more than 3
Job satisfaction 5 point agreement scale
Intrinsic Motivation 5 point agreement scale
Extrinsic motivation 5 point agreement scale
Happiness 5 point agreement scale
House owner Yes/no
Performance appraisal Below expectations – meets expectations – above expectations

What analysis do you suggest to the HR director? (1 point)