MSCM 541: Choosing Research Subjects in Supply Chain

All the items or individuals about which you want to draw conclusions.

A portion of the population of items or individuals.

Because it is less time-consuming, less costly, and easier to analyze than selecting every item in the population.

A bank studying years of financial transactions to identify patterns of fraud.

Compiled data from an organization or individual.

Subpopulation.

Primary sources involve the data collector using the data for analysis, while secondary sources involve the person performing data analysis not being the data collector.

To apply results obtained from a sample to the larger population.

In a nonrandom sample, every member of the population does not have an equal chance of being chosen.

Because participants are volunteers and know how to use computers and have access to them.

By comparing the results with those of parallel studies conducted using traditional methods, and evaluating the results to check if they conform to theoretical predictions.

Because they do not have an equal chance of being chosen from the population, and may not be representative of the population.

A limitation is that findings may not be generalizable to other strains. This can be addressed by repeating the study using different strains of rats.

Random sampling is most crucial when the researcher wants to apply the results directly to a population.

Two factors are how independent variables are manipulated and the realism of the research setting.

A potential issue is volunteer bias, which can result in a biased sample.

It is important because ethical guidelines require voluntary participation to protect the rights and dignity of participants.

Two ways are to wait for participants to happen along or to recruit participants and randomly assign them to conditions.

The two forms of deception are indirect deception, which involves not disclosing the full purposes or goals of a study, and direct deception, which involves deliberately providing misinformation to participants about critical aspects of a study.

Having someone known to participants make an appeal increases the likelihood of people volunteering to participate in the study.

Full disclosure may not be possible or desirable because it may affect the results of the study or influence participants' behavior.

One way to make an appeal more effective is to make it as interesting as possible.

Researchers avoid stressful tasks because people are less likely to volunteer for experiments that involve stress or aversive situations.

Media coverage may influence people's willingness to volunteer because it can affect their perceptions and attitudes towards research studies.

Deception raises methodological issues because it produces behavior different from when participants are caught unaware, and ethical issues because it may violate informed consent and affect participants' self-esteem and attitude toward research.

The social contract approach is an agreement between the researcher and participant on how research should be conducted, allowing for some deception as long as human dignity is maintained.

Deceived participants react differently from non-deceived participants, and are less likely to volunteer for future research, and may feel duped and experience a loss of self-esteem or develop a negative attitude toward research.

Obtaining prior consent to be deceived, where participants are told that some experiments may involve deception and only those who agree to be deceived are chosen.

Deception may violate the requirements of informed consent, leading to ethical concerns and potentially negative consequences for participants.

To justify the use of deception, the benefits must outweigh the costs, and a cost-benefit analysis may be necessary to determine whether deception is justified.