Question

Mixed gender decision-making groups. In business, a group of executives is often assigned to make key decisions. The American Journal of Political Science (April 2014) published a study on a woman’s impact on mixed-gender deliberating groups. The researchers randomly assigned subjects to one of several 5-member decision-making groups. The

groups’ gender composition varied as follows: 0 females, 1 female, 2 females, 3 females, 4 females, or 5 females. Each group was then randomly assigned to utilize one of two types of decision rules: unanimous or majority rule. Ten groups were created for each of the 6 * 2 = 12 combinations of gender composition and decision rule. One variable

of interest, measured for each group, was the number of words spoken by women on a certain topic per 1,000 total words spoken during the deliberations.

a. Why is this experiment considered a designed study?

b. Identify the experimental unit and dependent variable in this study.

c. Identify the factors for this study. Give the levels of each factor.

d. How many treatments are in this study? List them.

Short answer

d. The treatments are (0, unanimous), (1, unanimous), (2, unanimous), (3, unanimous), (4, unanimous), (5, unanimous), (0, majority), (1, majority), (2, majority), (3, majority), (4, majority), (5, majority).

Step-by-step solution

Given Information

The women participants are randomly assigned into ten treatment groups.

Concept

The treatments are the ordered pairs of all possible factor levels.

Identifying the factor

d.

There are five levels for the first factor and two for the second factor; therefore, the number of treatments is 10.

The list of the treatments is: (0, unanimous), (1, unanimous), (2, unanimous), (3, unanimous), (4, unanimous), (5, unanimous), (0, majority), (1, majority), (2, majority), (3, majority), (4, majority), (5, majority).