Data Collection
Lyla Van Aalst, Nyree Arteaga, Tiffany Fields, Gabriel Navarrete, Larissa Singleton-Wright, Curtis Tanksley
QNT/351
November 17, 2014
Bob Strong
Ballard Integrated Managed Services
Ballard Integrated Managed Services is a company that provides specific services on a contracted basis to companies. This sort of business does well and works with a variety of different sorts of companies. As with any business transaction, it is important to keep the customer happy in order to maintain a good reputation and keep the customer. There are a few issues that are slowly arising for Ballard Integrated Managed Services (BIMS). The Douglas Medical Center uses BIMS in order to meet their needs in food service, hospitality and the physical plant maintenance. The turnover rate has risen for the staff, which is concerning for their general manager. In addition to the turnover rate going up, there is a noticeable drop in morale. These problems call for management to problem-solve these issues.
Situation overview The question is why do employees leave? The purpose of this study is to answer what is causing the higher turnover, and why employee morale is dropping. These two issues could very easily be linked by lack of job satisfaction. In theory if the correct areas of dissatisfaction are located and corrected, the result will improve morale and reduce employee turnover. The hypothesis is that employees leave because of lack of job satisfaction. Low morale can lead to poor cooperation, low productivity and increased turnover which can lead to a business being unable to achieve its goals (Erb, 2014).
Instrument for Data Collection
To collect data, researchers have a variety of instruments at their disposal, some of which are very simple. The term "collection instrument" does not necessarily refer to an electronic or other device, but refers to a method of collecting qualitative data, such as interviews with hospital patients. In the case of BIMS the team will use a survey or questionnaire. The survey is simple and can be easily distributed to the employees. The HR manager has devised a survey to distribute to every employee with his or her paycheck, in the hopes of pinpointing the areas that are causing the most dissatisfaction.
Types of Data Collected
Ballard Integrated Managed services used both quantitative and qualitative data in their collection. Qualitative data are measurements that cannot be measured numerically they can only be classified into one of a group of categories (Lind, Marchal, & Wathan, 2011). The data was collected from a survey. The HR manager, Debbie Homer developed an employee survey instrument that was delivered to each of the 449 employees. The first ten questions on the survey asked the employees to express their views about different aspects of the job this was the qualitative section. They were asked different questions and then given numbers that ranged from very negative to very positive to circle. The second part of the survey: A-D was quantitative data. Quantitative data are data that are measured on a naturally occurring numerical scale (Lind, Marchal, & Wathan, 2011). All of the data was then coded and then put into a spreadsheet. The qualitative data had to be converted into a number value to properly be analyzed. The coding of the data will be discussed more in section “Coding the data”.
The Level of Measurement There are four types of measurements scales/ levels. They are nominal, ordinal, interval, and ratio. An ordinal scale for the first ten questions measured the survey given to the BIMS employees. Ordinal scales usually consist of non-numeric measurements they are more about concepts like feeling negative and positive, numbering your feelings and are qualitative. The second part of the survey questions: ratio scales measured A-D. Ratio scales tell about the order of things; has an absolute zero and is quantitative.
Coding the Data The data set in the BIMS Employee Survey
