Grant Thornton LLP is the U.S. member firm of Grant Thornton International, one of the six global accounting, tax, and business advisory organizations. It provides firmwide auditing training for its employees in three different auditing methods. Auditors were grouped into four blocks according to the education they had received:

(1) high school, (2) bachelor’s, (3) master’s, (4) doctorate.

Three auditors at each education level were used—one assigned to each method. They were given a posttraining examination consisting of complicated auditing scenarios. The scores for the 12 auditors were as follows:

SAR Salinas Sniper 3 104 109 5 160 163 7 142 146 10 133 156 Shift 1 Shift 2 Shift 3 Hourly 48 54 60 Nonsupervisory 31 36 55 Supervisors/Managers 25 33 40

a. Develop the appropriate test to determine whether blocking is effective or not. Conduct the test at the a  0.05 level of significance.

b. Develop the appropriate test to determine whether there are differences in the average number of hours missed due to illness across the three shifts. Conduct the test at the a  0.05 level of significance.

c. If it is determined that a difference in the average hours of work missed due to illness is not the same for the three shifts, use the LSD approach to determine which shifts have different means.