Organizational Behavior Research Study Design Essay

This research question was chosen due to the proximity and significance of the results to our lives as university students under constant stress. Student stress factors include, but are not limited to: living on a budget, living away from family (international students predominantly), time issues relating studying and/or working, culture shock, adapting to a new country, climate, people. It may be particularly relevant to identify the role of extroversion in dealing with stress, for students may so take it as a way to reduce stress if extroversion proves to be effective. Even more so, if through the questionnaires a positive correlation between individualism and stress is observed, extroversion may serve as a coping method with stress, as it is expected that extroverts rely on people to feel good; if introverts rely solely on themselves to cope with stress, factors such as emotional stability (brain or personality anomalies or disorders) may play a crucial role in determining whether or not there is the possibility for individualism to exacerbate stress. The model below expresses the relationship between the variables. The independent variable is the individualism factor of cultures. The dependent variable is the stress factor The third variable is extroversion, which acts as a mediator in theoretically reducing stress in students from individualistic cultures.? Hypotheses Hypothesis: Extroversion has a positive correlation in the reduction of stress in students from individualistic cultures. Hypothesis 2: Introversion has a negative correlation in the reduction of stress in students from individualistic cultures. Hypothesis H0 = Extroversion plays no role in reducing stress in students from individualistic cultures. Methodoogy Design The survey sample method was the preferred of data collection is through questionnaires due to the convenience and readiness through which results can be attained. Each questionnaire is a personal and confidential paper with only the student’s answers and nationality; only questionnaires with students from countries with individualism levels higher than 65 (according to the Hofstede scale) will be considered. The first questionnaire will be designed with the finality to discern between extroverts and introverts; it will consist of 15 basic questions about the person’s life setting, measuring their level of sociability and privacy. Later, they will be provided with a second questionnaire about the level of and how often they experience stress or positive moods, and will be measured by 20 questions about their life style and perception. These questionnaires will provide an overview of the level of stress experienced by extroverts and introverts. Questionnaires are not only cheap to administer, they also provide of insight on symptoms and emotions and the quantitative analysis thereof; however, the social desirability bias may jeopardize the objectivity of some answers, as well as the risk of some sensitive questions triggering specific reactions in students who might shape the answers. Sample questions can be found in Appendix 1. Data analysis Considering the many limitations in this study design proposal, with the potential large number of respondents, it was decided there is no representative sample for the statistical analysis of the questionnaires. The answers of the questionnaires will be translated to SPSS and due to the ordinal nature of the variables will allow for the data to be analysed through crosstabs and represented in bar charts, frequency tables and a scatter plot with a best fitting line. Reasoning and Evidence for Hypothesis Testing It has been inculcated that extroversion may be predictive of and is strongly correlated with, happiness (Costa, McRae & Norris, 1981). Headey, Glowacki, Holmstrom and Wearing (1985) argue this is conciliatory with extroverts experiencing more satisfactory life events with friends or at work. Additionally, previous studies suggested that good mood shows an increase in dopaminergic activity in several areas impinging of emotion and cognition; resulting furthermore, in a greater cerebral capacity to contrive stress. Since stress is as a negative emotional factor and good mood a positive emotional factor, this is supportive evidence that stress and good mood work in an opposing fashion; particularly with the observation that mental effects on the brain are reverse. Considering other studies’ deductions, circumstantial and medical evidence, we are prepared to consider and accept extroversion as a strong indicator of happiness and therefore a mitigator of stress. Happiness is ordinarily perceived as the quality of one’s life, the state of well-being, how much one likes life or, the degree to which one appraises live positively; the liking or positive appraisal of life may be stretched to the point of satisfaction, if high enough. However, the satisfaction with life is a mental state (constant or fleeting), but leaves doubts as to the nature of this mental state. The variance in interpretation and perception of concrete (words) and abstract (emotions) aspects among people is what precludes a conclusive result as to how can extroversion relate to happiness, the relationship between happiness and stress, and ultimately the point at issue that is if and how extroversion reduces stress. If happiness is positively correlated to extroversion and is negatively correlated with stress, we decided that measuring people’s extroversion may provide insight into their level of happiness which will allow us to infer into how efficiently they deal with stress. Putting it into a methodical perspective in accordance with our hypothesis; if a person belongs to an individualistic culture and is an extrovert, we expect them to have lower stress levels than people from the same individualistic cultural background who are not extroverts. This experiment’s design allows us to determine if extroversion does indeed reduce stress by hopefully identifying a pattern, and in case of such pattern, it will allow for grounds to further investigate other factors which may serve as coping mechanism for stress in ntroverts from predominantly individualistic cultures –which makes this theory generalizable, considering environmental factors are known. Hypotheses Testing The hypotheses will be tested through the answering of the questionnaires. Each questionnaire will aim to gauge the level of stress, extroversion (introversion) and happiness of each student. The statistical analysis will assay how these aspects are interrelated and provide an empirical conclusion as to the effect of extroversion in the stress factor of students from individualistic culture. The correlation of the measuring aspects can help determine whether there is a significant positive or negative relationship between the measuring aspects. As stated in the first hypothesis, we expect a positive correlation between extroversion and stress reduction in students from individualistic cultures due to the relating determinant, happiness. Conversely, the alternative hypothesis is to evaluate the degree to which an opposite relationship exists, in the absence of a correlation in the first hypothesis.