QUESTION 3 (20 Marks) Study the information provided below and answer the following questions. Mrs Cynthia Naidoo, the operations manager of Centurion Manufacturers, a large manufacturing firm, is convinced that employee upskilling is the single most effective means to engender sustained improvement in the productivity of the 350 employees in production department. She has hypothesized that a continuous improvement programme, comprising 3 training sessions, will lead to progressively higher outcomes in employee productivity. To implement her plan, she randomly recruited 60 employees working in the production department to participate in the continuous improvement programme. Using an objective research instrument developed for assessing the impact of the continuous improvement programme on employee productivity, the baseline productivity of the 60 recruited employees was measured before the start of the continuous development programme and then subsequently at the end of each of the three training sessions. Mrs Naidoos research instrument measured employee productivity at the interval scale. Two of the employees dropped out of the study. Finally, six months after the third training session, the productivity of 58 of the employees who signed up for the programme was measured using the same instrument. Table 3 below is an excerpt of the data collected from the study. Table 3: excerpt of the employee productivity data (in percent) collected from the study. Employee Ref # Pre-training score Post-training 1 score Post-training 2 score Post-training 3 score Final posttraining score 001 6 6 7 8 8 002 5 7 8 8 7 003 4 6 7 8 6 004 2 6 7 7 6 005 6 8 7 9 8 006 7 8 8 8 7 007 3 6 9 9 8 008 6 7 8 8 7 009 7 7 8 9 7 058 6 8 8 9 9 Mrs Naidoo used IBM SPSS Statistics version 27 to analyse the data collected and generated the output depicted in Figure 3.1 to Figure 3.6 below. Figure 3.1: Descriptive Statistics Mean Std. Deviation N Pre-Training score 4.91 1.750 58 Post-Training 1 score 6.93 .896 58 Post-Training 2 score 7.60 .954 58 Post-Training 3 score 8.10 .852 58 Final Post-Training 7.09 .708 58 Figure 3.2: Multivariate Testsa Effect Value F Hypothesis df Error df Sig. Partial Eta Squared Continuous_Improvement Pillai's Trace .815 59.507b 4.000 54.000 <.001 .815 Wilks' Lambda .185 59.507b 4.000 54.000 <.001 .815 Hotelling's Trace 4.408 59.507b 4.000 54.000 <.001 .815 Roy's Largest Root 4.408 59.507b 4.000 54.000 <.001 .815 a. Design: Intercept Within Subjects Design: Continuous_Improvement b. Exact statistic Figure 3.3: Mauchly's Test of Sphericitya Measure: MEASURE_1 Within Subjects Effect Mauchly's W Approx. ChiSquare df Sig. Epsilon b GreenhouseGeisser HuynhFeldt Lowerbound Continuous_Improvement .334 60.761 9 <.001 .620 .650 .250 Tests the null hypothesis that the error covariance matrix of the orthonormalized transformed dependent variables is proportional to an identity matrix. a. Design: Intercept Within Subjects Design: Continuous_Improvement b. May be used to adjust the degrees of freedom for the averaged tests of significance. Corrected tests are displayed in the Tests of Within-Subjects Effects table. Figure 3.4: Tests of Within-Subjects Effects Measure: MEASURE_1 Source Type III Sum of Squares df Mean Square F Sig. Partial Eta Squared Continuous_Improvement Sphericity Assumed 343.359 4 85.840 116.607 <.001 .672 GreenhouseGeisser 343.359 2.479 138.515 116.607 <.001 .672 Huynh-Feldt 343.359 2.600 132.043 116.607 <.001 .672 Lower-bound 343.359 1.000 343.359 116.607 <.001 .672 Error(Continuous_Improvement) Sphericity Assumed 167.841 228 .736 GreenhouseGeisser 167.841 141.295 1.188 Huynh-Feldt 167.841 148.220 1.132 Lower-bound 167.841 57.000 2.945 Figure 3.5: Continuous_Improvement Measure: MEASURE_1 Continuous_Improvement Mean Std. Error 95% Confidence Interval Lower Bound Upper Bound 1 4.914 .230 4.454 5.374 2 6.931 .118 6.696 7.167 3 7.603 .125 7.353 7.854 4 8.103 .112 7.879 8.327 5 7.086 .093 6.900 7.272 Figure 3.6: Profile Plots REQUIRED: 3.1 Based on the background information about the study provided above, identify and comprehensively describe the research design applied by Mrs Naidoo in the study. (5 marks) 3.2 Specify the independent variable (IV) and dependent variable (DV) of Mrs Naidoos study. (2 marks) 3.3 Formulate the null and alternative hypotheses of Mrs Naidoos study. (2 marks) 3.4 Provide a comprehensive interpretation of the output of Mrs Naidoos study. (7 marks) 3.5 Based on the primary findings from the study and relevant secondary evidence from the literature, propose TWO practical recommendations to Mrs Naidoo. (4 marks