HR Research & Evidence-Based Practice 4 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: An HR team uses a predictive analytics model to flag employees at risk of leaving. The model has high precision but low recall. This means:
- It correctly identifies most at-risk employees but has many false alarms
- When it flags someone as at-risk, it is usually correct, but it misses many at-risk employees (Correct answer)
- It performs well on training data but poorly on new data
- The model's predictions are statistically significant but not practically useful
Correct answer: When it flags someone as at-risk, it is usually correct, but it misses many at-risk employees
High precision means flagged cases are mostly true positives, while low recall means many actual at-risk employees are not being flagged.
Question 2: Which principle of ethical HR research requires that employees understand what data is being collected and how it will be used?
- Beneficence
- Justice
- Informed consent (Correct answer)
- Non-maleficence
Correct answer: Informed consent
Informed consent requires researchers to fully disclose the nature, purpose, and use of data collection before participants agree to participate.
Question 3: A software company implements a new performance review tool and measures its impact using a pre-post design without a control group. The main limitation of this approach is:
- It cannot generate quantitative data
- External factors during the study period cannot be ruled out as causes of change (Correct answer)
- Employee sample sizes will be too small
- It violates employee privacy regulations
Correct answer: External factors during the study period cannot be ruled out as causes of change
Without a control group, it's impossible to distinguish changes caused by the tool from changes caused by external factors occurring simultaneously.
Question 4: In evidence-based HR, 'effect size' is important because:
- A statistically significant result is always practically meaningful
- It quantifies the magnitude of a finding, independent of sample size (Correct answer)
- Larger samples always produce larger effect sizes
- It replaces the need for statistical significance testing
Correct answer: It quantifies the magnitude of a finding, independent of sample size
Effect size measures the practical magnitude of a finding; with large samples, even trivial differences can reach statistical significance.
Question 5: Which of the following is the strongest form of evidence for implementing a new employee wellness program in a tech company?
- A case study from one similar tech company reporting positive outcomes
- A randomized controlled trial published in a peer-reviewed occupational health journal (Correct answer)
- Recommendations from a well-known HR consulting firm
- Internal survey data showing employees want a wellness program
Correct answer: A randomized controlled trial published in a peer-reviewed occupational health journal
Randomized controlled trials published in peer-reviewed journals represent the gold standard of evidence due to rigorous design and independent review.
Question 6: An HR analyst discovers that the company's annual engagement survey has low response rates in engineering teams. The primary concern this raises is:
- The survey is too long and should be shortened immediately
- Non-response bias may make the data unrepresentative of engineering employees (Correct answer)
- Statistical significance cannot be calculated with low response rates
- The engineering team should be excluded from future surveys
Correct answer: Non-response bias may make the data unrepresentative of engineering employees
Low response rates risk non-response bias, where those who respond systematically differ from non-respondents, skewing the results.
Question 7: A company wants to benchmark its HR software adoption rate against industry peers. Which data source would be most credible for this purpose?
- LinkedIn posts from HR professionals describing their company's tools
- Proprietary benchmarking data from a reputable HR research organization like SHRM (Correct answer)
- Vendor-published statistics about their own software adoption
- Informal salary comparison websites with self-reported data
Correct answer: Proprietary benchmarking data from a reputable HR research organization like SHRM
Reputable HR research organizations collect standardized benchmarking data using rigorous methodology, making their reports the most credible source.
HR Research & Evidence-Based Practice 4
An HR team uses a predictive analytics model to flag employees at risk of leaving.
The model has high precision but low recall.
This means: