Assignment 3 Bus 642 Essays

Words: 1018
Pages: 5

Allyssa Fox
Assignment 3
BUS 642

Chapter 12 – Discussion Questions (Making Research Decisions) # 5 a Yes—Depends—No: One problem would be that “depends” is very vague and doesn’t give reasons as to why someone would pick “no” at some point and “yes” at another. A way to make this better would be to add a “please describe” line or change the wording all together. There is no way to express "don't know" or "undecided". b Excellent—Good—Fair—Poor: One problem with this would be that it may not have as valid a measure as say an 8 point scale, “as the number of scale points increases, the reliability of the measure increases. Second, in some studies, scales with 11 points may produce more valid results than 3-, 5-, or 7-point scales”

A construct of this study is that if State Farm gives money to the states of dangerous intersections to fix them this will decrease the amount of claims in that area due to the intersection becoming safer due to alternate construct. A concept would be that State Farm cares about their customers. Another construct would be that the amount of claims in a given intersection is due to poor construct. Another concept would be that State Farm wants to help states to improve their intersections.
2. What hypothesis might drive the research of one of the cities on the top 10 
dangerous intersection list? An example of a hypothesis that may influence the research of one of the top 10 dangerous intersection list would be “This intersection is one of the top ten most dangerous intersections in the United States” or “This intersection is where 50% of the states accident claims occur.”
3. Evaluate the methodology for State Farm’s research. I would say that State Farm’s methodology is concrete because it specifies exactly what the variables are and how the study is constructed. They also implemented a measurement system for classifying accidents.
4. If you were State Farm, how would you address the concerns of transportation engineers? I would provide suggestions of what the constructs of the safest intersections in a comparable size city are and help the engineers come up with a solid and safe plan to reconstruct the