Assignment 1: Public Administration ‒ The Good, The Bad, The Ugly

Due Week 3 and worth 210 points

The purpose of the assignments is to introduce students to the field of public administration and nonprofit organizations by identifying and analyzing the challenges a public administrator faces in a dynamic organizational and political environment. Each assignment builds upon the previous assignment allowing the student to gradually develop an understanding of how public administration and its policies are addressed on all levels of government.

For this assignment, you will use the readings and e-Activities from Weeks 1 through 3.

In this first assignment, you will select a policy issue and evaluate its impact. Select one (1) policy issue of interest to you, which will be used for evaluation for all of your assignments.

Write a four to five (4-5) page paper in which you:

1. Develop a brief overview (i.e., no more than one [1] paragraph) of the selected issue.
2. Recommend one (1) type of public policy out of the four (4) mentioned within the text and develop a reasoning as to why this policy supports the issue that you have selected. Provide a rationale for your response.
3. Suggest two (2) policy modifications that may positively impact and two (2) policy modifications that may negatively impact the outcomes for the issue that you have selected. Provide a rationale for your response. Note: In this question, you are recommending change to the public policy in Question #2 and how the changes will impact the selected issue.
4. Suggest three (3) methods by which the Constitution—specifically the powers of Congress— addresses the role of government within business administration overall for your selected issue. Provide a rationale to support your response. Note: In this question, you are evaluating the relationship between government and business of the selected issue. Focus on the role(s) the government and businesses play in supporting and / or negating the selected issue.
5. Include at least four (4) peer-reviewed references (no more than five [5] years old) from material outside the textbook. Note: Appropriate peer-reviewed references include scholarly articles and governmental Websites.. Wikipedia, other wikis, and any other Websites ending in anything other than “.gov” do not qualify as peer-reviewed.

When writing the paper, use the outline headings below that correspond to sections of the paper:

• Policy Issue (for Question 1)
• Public Policy (for Question 2)
• Policy Modification (for Question 3)
• The Constitution (for Question 4)
• References (for Question 5)

Your assignment must follow these formatting requirements:

• Be typed, double spaced, using Times New Roman font (size 12), with one-inch margins on all sides; citations and references must follow APA or school-specific format. Check with your professor for any additional instructions.
• Include a cover page containing the title of the assignment, the student’s name, the professor’s name, the course title, and the date. The cover page and the reference page are not included in the required assignment page length.

The specific course learning outcomes associated with this assignment are:

• Reconstruct the historical development of the field of public administration.
• Rearrange public administration, both the traditional and the new approaches, from structural, functional, and process perspectives, as well as the key goals of the public and private sector.
• Evaluate the role and functions of public administration as it relates to executive branches of government and public policies at federal, state, and local levels.
• Use technology and information resources to research issues in public administration.
• Write clearly and concisely about public administration using proper writing mechanics.

2. The formula for a regression equation is Y’ = 2X + 9.

a. What would be the predicted score for a person scoring 6 on X?

b. If someone’s predicted score was 14, what was this person’s score on X?

6. For the X,Y data below, compute:

a. r and determine if it is significantly different from zero.

b. the slope of the regression line and test if it differs significantly from zero.

c. the 95% confidence interval for the slope.

5. At a school pep rally, a group of sophomore students organized a free raffle for prizes. They claim that they put the names of all of the students in the school in the basket and that they randomly drew 36 names out of this basket. Of the prize winners, 6 were freshmen, 14 were sophomores, 9 were juniors, and 7 were seniors. The results do not seem that random to you. You think it is a little fishy that sophomores organized the raffle and also won the most prizes. Your school is composed of 30% freshmen, 25% sophomores, 25% juniors, and 20% seniors.

a. What are the expected frequencies of winners from each class?

b. Conduct a significance test to determine whether the winners of the prizes were distributed throughout the classes as would be expected based on the percentage of students in each group. Report your Chi Square and p values.

c. What do you conclude?

14. A geologist collects hand-specimen sized pieces of limestone from a particular area. A qualitative assessment of both texture and color is made with the following results. Is there evidence of association between color and texture for these limestones? Explain your answer.

11.1 Facts About the Chi-Square Distribution

Decide whether the following statements are true or false.

70. The standard deviation of the chi-square distribution is twice the mean.

11.4 Test for Homogeneity

For each word problem, use a solution sheet to solve the hypothesis test problem. Go to Appendix E for the chi-square solution sheet. Round expected frequency to two decimal places.

102. Do men and women select different breakfasts? The breakfasts ordered by randomly selected men and women at a popular breakfast place is shown in Table 11.55. Conduct a test for homogeneity at a 5% level of significance.

Table 11.55

Use the following information to answer the next twelve exercises: Suppose an airline claims that its flights are consistently on time with an average delay of at most 15 minutes. It claims that the average delay is so consistent that the variance is no more than 150 minutes. Doubting the consistency part of the claim, a disgruntled traveler calculates the delays for his next 25 flights. The average delay for those 25 flights is 22 minutes with a standard deviation of 15 minutes.

113. df = ________

117. Let α = 0.05

Decision: ________

Conclusion (write out in a complete sentence.): ________

12.3 The Regression Equation

66. Can a coefficient of determination be negative? Why or why not?

Use the following information to answer the next two exercises. The cost of a leading liquid laundry detergent in different sizes is given in Table 12.31.

82.

a. Using “size” as the independent variable and “cost” as the dependent variable, draw a scatter plot.

b. Does it appear from inspection that there is a relationship between the variables? Why or why not?

c. Calculate the least-squares line. Put the equation in the form of: Å· = a + bx

d. Find the correlation coefficient. Is it significant?

e. If the laundry detergent were sold in a 40-ounce size, find the estimated cost.

f. If the laundry detergent were sold in a 90-ounce size, find the estimated cost.

g. Does it appear that a line is the best way to fit the data? Why or why not?

h. Are there any outliers in the given data?

i. Is the least-squares line valid for predicting what a 300-ounce size of the laundry detergent would you cost? Why or why not?

j. What is the slope of the least-squares (best-fit) line? Interpret the slope.

Inferences ???

My younger brother had a run in earlier with Médecins Sans Frontières.  He narrowly escaped from an adverse verdict by the court. He asked my oldest brother if he can conduct a survey for him about justice in the Canadian Court. An initial survey was performed right after Médecins Sans Frontières accused my brother of wrong doing.  Of 1852 customers, 53 were against the aggressive tactics of Médecins Sans Frontières.  After my brother was cleared by the court, a follow-up survey was performed.  Of 4699 customers, 1751 said they did not agree with the aggressive tactics of Médecins Sans Frontières.  At the 1% significance level, do the data suggest that a higher percentage of customers were against Médecins Sans Frontières after the court case?

A customer throws a product on the counter and says, “I want my money back now!” He attacks your

personal integrity and you can feel your anger ready to erupt. The customer says, “I’ll never do

business with you again!”

Assignment Directions

Submit your answers to the questions in a double-spaced paper, no more than three pages long, APA

Assignment Checklist

• Describe the customer problem

• Discuss ways to handle the problem

• Apply a solution that incorporates customer-building strategies from your text