research

Same Question, Different Answers: How It Happens

How can two studies researching the same question come up with two different answers? That was the dilemma that several media outlets recently had to confront, with the release of the results of two studies looking at the impact of the city of Seattle’s minimum wage ordinance, which raised the minimum wage rate for workers in that city. Even though the studies were looking at the same issue, they came up with results that contradicted each other.

The results of the first study indicated that the wage increase didn’t reduce overall job numbers or hours of work. Media: “Yay! Minimum wage increases are a good thing.” But then the results of the second study indicated that the wage increase caused declines in both numbers of jobs and amounts of work. Media: “Um…okay, maybe minimum wage increases aren’t that great.”

The fact that these studies had different results doesn’t mean that one study is right and the other is wrong, or that both studies are wrong and nobody really knows what happened. The studies are admittedly not easy reading – both use complex forms of economic analysis that, frankly, I wouldn’t try to explain because I would probably get them wrong. But we can still look at how the studies were designed and carried out to see if there are reasons why their results might differ.

Here’s a table that (more…)

The Golden Passport

It costs $144,000 US to get a Master of Business Administration degree at the Harvard Business School (HBS). Anyone paying that amount of money isn’t just buying an education – they’re also buying into a reputation, and gaining entry into a self-perpetuating elite circle of control. That’s why business journalist Duff McDonald’s new book, The Golden Passport: Harvard Business School, The Limits of Capitalism, and the Moral Failure of the MBA Elite, is a much-needed critique. It takes an uncompromising look at how HBS operates, and how (more…)

A Closed Loop?: Inclusion and Exclusion in Academic Research

I’ve written before about studies that have investigated the process of peer review – the system by which researchers assess the quality of each other’s work. The results of some of those studies suggest that a process that is supposed to be neutral and anonymous is anything but. Now there is a new study of research published in peer-reviewed academic journals that suggests journal articles may play a role in maintaining power and resource imbalances between universities and researchers.

The article, by Chad Wellmon of the University of Virginia and Andrew Piper of McGill University, will be published soon in the journal Critical Inquiry. Wellmon and Piper point out that (more…)

Just Don’t Call Me Late for Dinner

During the recent British Columbia provincial election, a small fuss arose around how the leaders of the three major political parties addressed each other during the few times they met in debates. Liberal leader Christy Clark addressed New Democratic Party leader John Horgan as “Mr. Horgan” and Green Party leader Andrew Weaver as “Dr. Weaver”. Some people interpreted the “Doctor” as Clark being unnecessarily deferential to Weaver so as to implicitly insult non-Doctor Horgan.

Weaver does, indeed, have a Ph.D. – from the University of British Columbia, in applied mathematics. He was also part of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that was a co-winner of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize, although I suppose “Dr. Weaver, Nobel Peace Prize co-winner” would have been a bit unwieldy as a form of address.

But what to call Weaver genuinely seemed to puzzle many people – to the point where (more…)

The Crooked Path of Research

 

This is a great explanation of why scientific research projects, and the results of those projects, are not as definitive or as linear as writers like Malcolm Gladwell want us to believe.

Scientific progress is a tricky thing. Despite what you might think, the direction of science is not always forwards – sometimes as a species we can unlearn things which then take us hundreds of years to re-discover. Sometimes this is simply from ideas not being publicised enough and it slips through the cracks. But more…

via How to keep science going forward — ErrantScience

Misfits in the Workplace

If you are involved in hiring, or if you do research about hiring, one of the terms that you consistently encounter is “person-organization fit”. That term describes the idea that in a successful hiring, the values of the employee match the values of the organization. However, in turbulent labour markets, job seekers may be less concerned with finding a “fit” and more concerned with just finding a job. On the other side of the equation, employers may be less worried about “fit” and more worried about finding someone who’s capable of adequately performing the job. Those priorities can result in more and more workplace  “misfits”  – employees who don’t feel like they belong in the organization, or who don’t want to be there, but who don’t feel they have the option to leave.

A research article published late last year takes a very interesting perspective on the “misfit” experience.  It seems reasonable to assume that because misfits are unhappy at work, their job performance would be poor, and they would tend to be disengaged from the organization. However, this study proposes that, (more…)

Race, Class, and Bias in Hiring

At the start of a new year, a lot of people make resolutions for what they want to achieve in the next twelve months – and often those resolutions have something to do with work. The resolution could be to choose a new career, to get more education, or to look for a new job. So now is a particularly appropriate time to look at two recent studies about bias in employers’ hiring processes. The results of these studies demonstrate that job applicants can often be rejected for reasons that have absolutely nothing to do with their ability to do the job. And the studies also suggest that biased hiring has effects that go way beyond individual careers or workplaces.

These two studies used essentially the same methodology, which is (more…)

Job Churn and Precarious Work

I wrote an opinion article for the Report on Business section of the Globe and Mail newspaper, responding to recent comments by Canadian politicians that workers should “get used to” job churn and precarious work. You can read the article here.

University Diversity

Diversity in the workforce is a challenging issue for many organizations, but it’s particularly critical for universities. This is partly because many universities are publicly funded, which might imply that they have a larger responsibility to represent the population that financially supports them. And universities that teach about inclusivity and equality should surely be expected to live those values in their own operations.

But another reason is that universities are large and very visible organizations. Unlike workers at companies whose operations are largely unseen, workers at universities interact with large numbers of people – students, communities, governments – every day. So if there is a lack of diversity in the workforce at universities, it will be far more noticeable than it might be in other types of organizations.

Statistics Canada collects data on gender diversity among post-secondary instructors, but it doesn’t collect data on racial, ethnic or international diversity in that occupation. So I was very interested in (more…)

Pumpkins and Pomposity

Margaret Wente, a columnist for the Globe and Mail newspaper, isn’t known for having insightful or original perspectives on issues. Earlier this year, it was discovered that some of her columns were truly unoriginal – that is, they contained unattributed material taken from other sources. But the topics of Wente’s columns also tend to be recycled, and two weeks ago she returned to one of her favourite topics: the silliness of some academic research.

Since I’ve written about Wente’s attacks on academics before, I recognize that I’m also recycling topics by devoting a blog post to her latest anti-academic screed. But Wente’s reasoning and analyses in this column are so appallingly weak that they deserve to be called out.

Wente’s column starts (more…)