MEMO: To Personnel Office statistical staff
FROM: Personnel Director
SUBJECT: Analysis of the 1998 Employee Survey Data
We have administered a survey to all our employees (both management and nonmanagement employees.) For this project, I want you
to focus on the results for our nonmanagement employees. You will be provided with a
copy of the survey. The data from the survey have
been placed in an EXCEL file (1998southeast.xls).The survey is designed to measure
the job satisfaction of our employees and their evaluation of management's actions in a number of key areas. We are
interested in relating job satisfaction to evaluation of management action.
Our difficulty at present is that we have a large number of
questions that might be used to measure job satisfaction. It is also possible that job
satisfaction has a number of sub components (e.g. satisfaction with supervisors,
satisfaction with reward opportunities, and so on). To carry out this assignment, you will
need to construct an overall job
satisfaction scale. You must identify the items to be included in your composite
scale, justify your selection of these items, and assess the overall reliability
of your scale. Please explain the approach you use, indicating how reliable you believe
your scale is. Also, comment if you can, on the validity of the
scale. I would be especially interested if your scale predicts employee's expectation of
quitting (JOB9). I would be interested in whether or not management
personnel outscore non management personnel on this scale. However, you do
not need to redo the scale if there is no difference. This technical detail should be placed in an appendix.
Once you are confident in the reliability of your scale, I
would like you to analyze the relationship between overall satisfaction and one of the
management initiatives. You should use regression and correlation techniques to do the
analysis. The assignments are given below by group:
1. Analyze the relationship between employee satisfaction and perception of how management attempts to keep cost down (Group 1)
2. Analyze the relationship between employee satisfaction and perception of how management recognizes and rewards their accomplishments.
(Group 2)
3. Analyze the relationship between employee satisfaction and perception of whether management promotes the most qualified workers.
(Group 3)
4. Analyze the relationship between employee satisfaction and perception of management efforts to be lean and efficient. (Group 4)
5. Analyze the relationship between employee satisfaction and perception of management efforts to implement new ways of doing things.
(Group 5)
6. Analyze the relationship between employee satisfaction and perception of management attempts to provide a safe environment. (Group 6)
You should estimate two specifications. The first estimate should not control for other
characteristics of the workers (a simple regression or correlation). The
second estimate should control for race, sex, tenure with the firm and age.
You must also pick at least one more control variable. While your write up of the results
should focus on the relationship between management action and satisfaction, you should
also comment on the results for the control variables.
Using the estimation that does not control for other variables, I would like you to estimate the
improvement in satisfaction that we might expect to see if we can convince all our
employees that management initiatives (the management initiative assigned to your
group above) are absolutely critical. How much confidence do you have in this prediction? Does
perception explain much of the difference in satisfaction across employees (you should
again use the estimation that does not control for other variables to answer this)?
Please provide your results to me by November 29, 2007 at 5:00 pm since I must submit our
findings at that time. Please provide an executive summary, a technical appendix and all
figures that you feel are important for my evaluation.
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