Data Analysis + Interpretation

Data Analysis + Interpretation

To make this Business Data Analysis and Interpretation Assignment professionally, the mainly work of this assignment is to create at least eight (10) tables, charts and diagrams included as Appendix to support report writing.

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Case Study – The start of my career in HR

You have recently completed a Bachelor of Business degree through the College of Business, Law and Governance at James Cook University (JCU) and have been appointed as a junior member of the Human Resources (HR) team at JCU. This is your first full time position and you are on probation for three months. You feel a little anxious but you are keen to make a good impression in order to secure your position.

It is Monday morning of your second week in the position. On arrival your boss calls you into her office. She has a project for you that she wishes you to complete by 5pm on April 13^th 2018.

She explains…

 

The Vice Chancellor is interested in creating a gender neutral and environmentally sound work place, that is, she would like to see equal representation of males and females in the JCU workforce at all levels. She would also like to see equality in regards to remuneration (pay), retention (time employed with JCU) and employment level.

Such data and subsequent reports are important to the VC as it will inform planning for and assessment of future and current innovative hiring, training, and promotion policies and programs encouraging staff being proactive around these issues.

The Vice Chancellor is particularly keen to improve the retention rate for women employees across all campuses as historically the retention of women in the organisation has been problematic.

To this end I need you to do some preliminary studies, investigating what the current employee environment is and therefore identifying the priorities in terms of areas that need to be targeted to move towards the Vice Chancellor’s goals.

 

Asks:

Can you put together a statistical report about university staff and their general characteristics?

You need to make sense of the data using your knowledge of descriptive statistical concepts to explain and summarise the staff information.

 

Continues:

I would like you to

1. Identify the variables and their types and scales of measurement.
2. Provide a table in which you summarise complete descriptive statistics on ‘salary’ and ‘age’ (including but NOT limited to measures of central location, measures of variability, coefficient of variation, etc.). Do these for the three individual campuses and JCU as a whole.
3. Provide a scatter plot and correlation analysis for ‘salary’ and ‘age’.

Do these for the three individual campuses and JCU as a whole. What insights can be gained from these analyses?

4. Develop tables to provide joint information on:
   1. Gender and average salary
   2. Gender and length of employment (cross-tabulation, use percentages)
   3. Gender and level of education (cross-tabulation, use percentages)

For the three individual campuses and JCU as a whole.

Be Careful to explain your tables.

5. Graphically demonstrate the output of questions 4.

 

 

 

 

Report Structure

3.1   Introduction

All written assignments must follow specific structures that allow the document to be easily read and understood.  A formal report should contain the following sections, in the order given. Some sections are NOT REQUIRED in the report for BU1007 as noted below.

1. Assignment cover sheet
2. Letter of transmittal (not required)
3. Title page
4. Table of contents
5. Executive summary (not required)
6. Introduction
7. The body
8. Conclusions
9. Recommendations (not required)
10. List of references (LOR)
11. Appendices (Very Important)

 

3.2   Introduction

The introduction has three parts:

• purpose of the report: tell the reader why the report is being produced
• limitations: any limitations encountered in the production of the report that may affect the results of the report
• the scope of the report: summarise what the report covers, how information will be presented in the report, where the information for the report comes from and how it will be gathered (e.g. questionnaires or other research). Be careful here once again not to simply reproduce the table of contents; this should be an overview or summary of what will be done, not a bit-by-bit reproduction.  Focus on the important elements.

 

3.3   Body of report

The structure of the body of the report is directed by the assessment item. Consider the case questions and structure this section using headings and subheadings to convey the report content. In the table of contents above, an example structure is provided for another report topic.

 

3.4   Conclusions

This section should essentially summarise the main points or findings of the report.  It should be based on the information presented in the body.  It is essential that you do not introduce any new information or ideas at this stage and the use of direct quotations should be avoided.  The conclusion should answer the question: what do the findings mean?

It is important to ensure that your conclusions are consistent with the outline given in the introduction.  For this reason, it is generally recommended that the introduction be written after the main report.  The conclusion should answer the following questions.  Was the purpose of the report fulfilled?  Have the specified sources of information been used?  Have the areas stated been adequately tackled?

 

 

 

3.5   Table of contents

The table of contents should be listed on a new page of the report and, as for the executive summary, this page is numbered using a roman numeral (e.g. ii).  Sections are listed in the order in which they appear in the report and the corresponding page numbers should be shown.  Page 1 of the report, usually the introduction, follows the executive summary, and all subsequent sections are then numbered using Arabic numerals (2, 3, 4 etc.).

 

	TABLE OF CONTENTS	Page
	Executive summary	ii
	1.     Introduction	1
	2.     The current situation	2
	2.1     Basis for operations	3
	2.1.1     Organisational structure	5
	2.1.2     Operations code	6
	2.2     Sales department	7
	3.     Planned development	8
	3.1     Objectives of the company	9
	3.1.1     Assumptions	9
	3.2    Priorities in implementing the plans	10
	4.     Conclusions	11
	5.     Recommendations	11
	List of references	12
	Appendices
	Appendix 1 – The organisational chart	13
	Appendix 2 – Competitor analysis	14
	List of tables
	Table 1 – The financial structure	6
	List of figures
	Figure 1 – Graph of financial data	10
	i

Sample table of contents