Rating service at five-star hotels. A study published in the Journal of American Academy of Business, Cambridge

(Mar. 2002) examined whether the perception of the quality of service at five-star hotels in Jamaica differed by gender. Hotel guests were randomly selected from the lobby and restaurant areas and asked to rate 10 service-related items (e.g., “the personal attention you LO3 received from our employees”). Each item was rated on a five-point scale 11 = “much worse than I expected,”

5 = “much better than I expected”2, and the sum of the items for each guest was determined. A summary of the guest scores is provided in the following table.

Gender Sample Size Mean Score Standard Deviation Males 127 39.08 6.73 Females 114 38.79 6.94

a. Construct a 90% confidence interval for the difference between the population mean service-rating scores given by male and female guests at Jamaican five-star hotels.

b. Use the interval you constructed in part a to make an inference about whether the perception of the quality of service at five-star hotels in Jamaica differs by gender.

*c. Is there evidence of a difference in the variation of guest scores for males and females? Test using a = .10.