Hello to all of you,
I want to make an intervention at work, and I wish to measure the effects of such intervention.
I intend to introduce a new goal management process: I would like to analyze whether the goal monitoring frequency affects the goal attainment.
My intention is to make a survey to collect data before and after the intervention. The data that I would collect would consist of:
- Individual data points (to avoid repetition and to pair with second survey).
- Independent variable: the goal monitoring frequency.
- Dependent variables: knowledge of goals, performance indicators.
Although the idea seems pretty straightforward, I've been researching without much success regarding the methodology of the analysis.
As I understood it, this can be considered a lingitudinal study, since I will ask the same questions to the same individuals in two different points in time.
I would like to have some guidance on how to perform the analysis, regarding the methodology and the requirenments thereof.
Thank you for your guidance!
You are describing an n=1 study without a control group. It is difficult to make inferences from such a design. Since presumably folks in the company will be speaking with each other, it means they are not independent (hence the n=1, rather than the number of surveys collected).
I suggest some literature review, see e.g., https://europepmc.org/article/med/11237119
https://ro.ecu.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1421&context=ecuworks https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/5421/1b6e29002299890f5c237af1ad6d8fecb542.pdf
This sounds like simple experimental design, with two measures which would be termed "pre" and "post" in this framework. You should be able to find discussions of this kind of research design in any good, graduate-level introduction to social science research methods.
I think it sounds like quasi-experimental design, as Daniel opined, I think you need a control group. However, care must be taking to ensure no interaction among the experimental and control groups. You did not also mention the time frame. Would you be able to ensure that there is no interaction between the two groups? If no, then think of another method.
The study is possible but may be daunting, see if you can heed Daniel's advise.
Let us know the nature of the intervention, if possible.
Thank you all for providing me with your perspectives on the topic.
Daniel Wright : Adding a control group is feasible due to the size of the company. But then again, according to the rationale, I would still be dealing with a n=1 study.
How can such an experiment within a company be undertaken, if the communication among employees is expected?
Oluwasola Ajewole The time frame will be of 2 months between both surveys. The intervention will break down the goals to the individual employee (In contrast with goals being given to the coaches that are distributed down to the employee without any system).
The difficulty is interaction among people, including within the same group. If you had many companies you would be able to treat this as a multilevel problem. If you want to assume that the data are independent, then this is less of a worry. Depends on your context. In that case you should look at things like Lord's Paradox ( Article Allocation to groups: Examples of Lord's paradox
). You might also check: https://www.degruyter.com/view/journals/edu/2/1/article-p45.xml which discusses how to do gain score, ancova, and propensity matching methods.- Badges
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