Investigation 2: Bargaining Deceit (assigned Mon Jan 11, due Fri Jan 15)

You may work with one other person on this assignment, handing in one report with both names. Word-processed reports are much preferred to hand-written ones. Please copy/paste relevant, applet output into a Word file as appropriate.

Are people more likely to lie with email than with pencil-and-paper? A study reported at the August 2008 meeting of the Academy of Management involved 48 graduate students in business at a particular university who participated in a bargaining game. The response variable of interest was whether the person misrepresented (lied about) the size of the pot when negotiating with another player. Some of the participants were randomly assigned to use email for their communication, while others used paper-and-pencil. It turned out that 24 of 26 who used email were guilty of lying about the pot size, compared to 14 of 22 who used paper-and-pencil.

a) Organize the data into a two-way (2×2) table, with the explanatory variable in columns.

b) For each group, determine the sample proportion who lied. Do these proportions differ in the direction conjectured by the researchers (as indicated in the first sentence above)? Explain.

c) Describe how you could use index cards to conduct a simulation analysis for determining whether the difference between these proportions is statistically significant. Include the following information in your description:

i) how many cards you would use

ii) how many cards would be marked in what way

iii) how many cards you would deal out into which groups

iv) which kinds of cards you would then count

v) how you would determine an approximate p-value, after you conducted a large number of repetitions

d) Describe the null model underlying your simulation analysis.

e) Use the applet available here to conduct a simulation analysis with 1000 repetitions. Submit a screen capture of the applet results. [Hint: This applet is just like the ones that we used in class for the dolphin study and for the yawning study, except you must first enter the data in the “Observed Results” table. Be sure to turn off the “Animate” button before you ask for a large number of repetitions. Click on “Approx p-value” to determine the approximate p-value. Depending on how you enter the table, you may need to click on the “<=” button to indicate the appropriate direction for determining the approximate p-value. Once you have the applet results, use the “print screen” key on your computer, and then copy/paste.]

f) Provide a complete, detailed interpretation (in one or two sentences) of what this (approximate) p-value measures in this context (i.e., what is it the probability of?)

g) Based on this approximate p-value, is the observed difference between the groups statistically significant at the a = .05 level? Explain the reasoning process behind your answer.

h) Summarize your conclusion. Be sure to address issues of generalizability and causation as well as statistical significance.