Mid-level managers from various companies in the U.S. agreed to participate in study in which they were randomly sampled and randomly assigned to one of 3 treatment programs: (i) a naturalistic wilderness group survival program, (ii) a physical development program, and (iii) an in-class lecture/discussion type program.
Introduction
Alpha Incorporated is a large U.S. national company that specializes in providing IT Consulting for other companies. The company is interested in knowing how three different intervention programs will influence the self-concept of their mid-level managers. They believe that these results can help their clients make better decisions regarding their managers.
Data Description
171 mid-level managers from companies all over the United States agreed to participate in this study. Managers were randomly selected and randomly assigned to one of the three intervention programs: a naturalistic-wilderness group survival program, a physical development program and an in-class lecture/discussion type program.
Business Questions
Alpha Incorporated would like to know, if there is a difference between any of the three intervention programs mentioned above?
Analysis & Results
We ran descriptive statistics on the data provided based on the scores of mid-level managers for each intervention program. We found the mean, median, mode and standard deviation for each of the intervention programs. The naturalistic-wilderness group survival program had the highest mean (47.42), followed by the in-class lecture/discussion program (43.26) and the physical development program had the least mean (34.96). Based on the descriptive statistics, the naturalistic wilderness program data is negatively skewed, whereas the in class/discussion as well as the physical development program data is positively skewed. Based on the standard
deviation, we found that the managers in the naturalistic wilderness program vary a lot among themselves (7.51), followed by the in class/discussion program (2.72) and finally the physical development program varies the least (2.01).
| Naturalistic Wilderness Program | Physical Development Program | In class/discussion Program | |
| MEAN | 47.42 | 34.96 | 43.26 |
| MEDIAN | 47 | 35 | 44 |
| MODE | 45 | 33 | 44 |
| STANDARD DEVIATION | 7.51 | 2.01 | 2.72 |
We also looked at the shape of our data for all the three intervention programs and created histograms. The Naturalistic Wilderness Program histogram shape is negatively skewed, whereas Physical Development as well as In-class/discussion program histogram is negatively skewed.
ANOVA
| Source of Variation | SS | df | MS | F | P-value | F crit |
| Between Groups | 4584.784 | 2 | 2292.392 | 101.059 | 0.000 | 3.050 |
| Within Groups | 3810.877 | 168 | 22.68379 | |||
| Total | 8395.661 | 170 |
Because Alpha Incorportaed has three intervention groups and they wanted to see if there is a significant difference among them, we put together a completely randomized design which we analyzed by using analysis of variance (ANNOVA). The results are in the table below:
Our hypothesis were:
Null hypothesis (Ho): mean1 = mean 2 = mean 3 (means for all 3 of our intervention programs) Alternative hypothesis (Ha): At least one of these means is different
Our ANNOVA table showed that our F-test statistic was (101.059) and our F critical value was (3.050) along with our alpha of (0.05) When we compared both values the F-test statistic was greater that the f critical, so we rejected our null hypothesis and came to the conclusion that at least one of these programs are different from each other. Therefore, at least one of these groups produced different averages for the self-concept of managers.
Based on the averages for each group: naturalistic-wilderness group (47.42), physical development program (34.96) and in class/discussion program (43.26), we saw that the average for physical development program was quite lower than the other two. This led us to believe that the physical development program could be the one that is different from the other two.
Conclusion
Our results showed that not all intervention groups produce the same average of self-concept in managers and based on this result we feel that the physical development program is the least successful among the others. Therefore, when Alpha Incorporated will do their consulting, we would recommend them to chose between either naturalistic wilderness program or the in class/discussion program and not to use the physical development program, if they want to increase the self-concept scores of the mid-level managers.
