Readings

Rauser, J. (2014, October 15). Statistics Without the Agonizing Pain. Presented at the Big Data Conference - Strata + Hadoop World, New York, NY. Retrieved from http://strataconf.com/stratany2014/public/schedule/detail/37554

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Dnw46eC-0o(11:47)

Singleton, R. A. J., & Straits, B. C. (2009). Approaches to Social Research (5 edition.). New York: Oxford University Press. (Chapter 4: Elements of Research Design)

Aguinis, H., & Vandenberg, R. J. (2014). An Ounce of Prevention Is Worth a Pound of Cure: Improving Research Quality Before Data Collection. Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior, 1(1), 569-595. doi:10.1146/annurev-orgpsych-031413-091231

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y1tNSEXh9Gk (18:49)

Hekman, D. R., Aquino, K., Owens, B. P., Mitchell, T. R., Schilpzand, P., & Leavitt, K. (2010). An Examination of Whether and How Racial and Gender Biases Influence Customer Satisfaction. Academy of Management Journal, 53(2), 238-264. doi:10.5465/AMJ.2010.49388763 (AMJ best paper winner for 2010)

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NanlRlhlHR8 (1:40)

Deephouse, D. L. (1999). To be different, or to be the same? It's a question (and theory) of strategic balance. Strategic Management Journal, 20(2), 147-166. doi:10.1002/(SICI)1097-0266(199902)20:2<147::AID-SMJ11>3.0.CO;2-Q

Instructions

The course uses anonymous grading. Make sure to follow the instructions for written assignments and plagiarism policy and not include anything that might identify you or the university where you come from in the assignment or the name of the file.

Start by watching the first video. Then read the listed material. It is highly recommended that you read the material in this order and watch the videos after reading the papers. 

You can skim through the non-methodological parts of the empirical papers. The versions available in the course Zotero library contain highlighted sections that are discussed in class. Note each empirical paper is used in multiple classes so not all highlighted sections are discussed on this class.

Questions

Please answer the questions in English. Answers written in other languages will not be graded.

1) What is the main message of John Rauser in the first video and how do you think it applies to the course?

Evaluate the article by Hekman and colleagues:

2) How are the seven issues raised by Aguinis and Vandenberg addressed in the paper by Hekman and colleagues? Are all the recommendations by Aguinis and Vandenberg taken into consideration, or can you find something that could be improved?

3) Explain the hypothetico-decuctive method and Popper's falsificationism based on Sankey's book chapter. What are the key differences between these two methods? Does Hekman's article have any elements of these methods?

The answer should be 3-6 pages. If you have done this assignment before as a part of another course or a previous attempt at this course, you can use your old answer as a starting point and do a revision. If you need help or have questions about the assignment, please post those to the unit 2 discussion forum.