Question

you have been hired by a company in the Bay area to assess whether diverse teams are more effective than non-diverse teams. You hypothesize that diverse team are more effective than non-diverse teams.

1. How would you restate your hypothesis in a more technical manner?

2. How would you operationalize/measure diversity and team effectively?

3. What type of method would you use and why( qualitative, cross sectional, experiment)

4. What moderators or mediators do you think would be relevant to also study?

Answer 1

Solution:-

1. How would you restate your hypothesis in a more technical manner:-

There is a positive relationship between team diversity and team effectiveness.

2. How would you operationalize/measure diversity and team effectively

Team Diversity (abstract idea)	Team Effectiveness (R&D teams)
# Years of work experience (tenure)	Give all the teams a task/project and see how much they do by period X
# years of work experience in industry X	# of tasks they complete
Technical achievements/certifications	Quality of work - measured by management
What major/degree	# of new ideas generated in 6 month period
Work with other departments	Amount of sales
	# of new accounts
	Above or below budget
	Do they meet deadlines?

3. What type of method would you use and why( qualitative, cross sectional, experiment):-

Any method works!

I said the type of method I would use is experimental research method because you can have a controlled manipulation of the work environment and different tasks/assignments that needs to be done.