Question

Amy wanted to increase the productivity of clerical staff in her plant. She thought

painting their office blue (her favorite color) would increase their rate of work
completion, but that keeping their office white would have no effect on their rate of work
completion. To test this idea, she painted the office in the Sales Department blue and
kept the office of the Public Relations Department white. Then she kept track of how
many projects each department completed in the next three months. For the period
following the painting, the Sales clerical staff dramatically outperformed the Public
Relations clerical staff in the number of projects completed.
A) What is the target behavior and an operational definition of it?
B) What is the hypothesis?
C) What is the independent variable?
D) What is the dependent variable?
E) Who is the control group?
F) Who is the experimental group?
G) What variables are not controlled that could impact the results of the experiment?

Answer 1

A) The target behavior is the rate of work completion by the clerical staff.
An operational definition of it could be the number of projects completed within a specific time frame.

B) The hypothesis is that painting the office blue will increase the rate of work completion for the Sales Department clerical staff.

C) The independent variable is the color of the office (blue for Sales Department, white for Public Relations Department).

D) The dependent variable is the number of projects completed by each department.

E) The control group is the Public Relations Department clerical staff, whose office was kept white.

F) The experimental group is the Sales Department clerical staff, whose office was painted blue.

G) Variables that are not controlled and could impact the results of the experiment could include factors such as the workload of each department, the skill level of the clerical staff, or any other environmental factors that may have influenced their productivity.