Assignment 2: Someone to Respect and Admire

There are leaders in every field of study and business around the world. Select a business leader you admire. Use your textbook, the Argosy University online library resources, and the Internet to select a leader and then to research the leader’s career.

Write a paper on your selected leader. Include the following in the paper:

• Give an overview of the organization and the leader.
• Explain how the person demonstrates integrity or ethics, giving examples.
• Provide your own insight into the organization or leader.

• • What makes the person or organization stand out?
  • If you were in that person’s place or worked for the organization, would you make the same choices? Why or why not?

Write a three- to four-page paper in Word format. Apply APA standards for writing style to your work. Also use APA to cite books, articles and websites used in your research.  Use the following file naming convention:LastnameFirstInitial_M4_A2.doc.

By Wednesday, February 3, 2016, deliver your assignment to the M4: Assignment 2 Dropbox.

Final Research Project

The topic of your project needs to be a contemporary societal problem, such as healthcare reform, immigration reform, privacy rights, euthanasia, First Amendment Rights, stem cell research, capital punishment, corporate prisons, legalizing drugs, ageism, animal rights, cloning, prayer in schools, racial profiling, recycling/conservation, sexism, outsourcing jobs, workplace bullying, etc. The topic must focus on a single aspect, as in “How far do corporations intrude into the private lives of their employers?” or “The social costs of financing the distribution of custom-designed drugs.” You may suggest another topic to use, but the instructor must approve the topic during the Week Two Discussion.

The Final Research Project will present research relating the responsibilities of a critical thinker to contemporary society. In this assignment, you will do the following:

• Research one aspect of a contemporary social problem.
• Define the problem.
• Propose a possible solution for the problem.
• Create an argument that supports your thesis position. You should take on the perspective of a critically thinking researcher. The argument must present a thesis statement and evidence to support the thesis statement.
• Evaluate the ethical outcomes that result from the position you take on the issue and explain how those outcomes would influence society and culture.
• Interpret statistical data from at least two peer-reviewed scholarly sources.
• Evaluate evidence using the following standards: validity, reliability, and bias related to the chosen topic and accurately identify strengths and weaknesses.

Research and Define the Problem

You must take on the perspective of your major field of study and explain in your paper what that perspective is and how it informs your view of the topic. The topics listed above are far too broad to write about in 10–12 pages (3,300–3,900 words). Instead, you must choose a narrowly defined thesis and approach it from the perspective of your field.

Example: If you are an economics major, and you are interested in immigration reform, you should approach a very specific aspect of immigration reform through the lens of economic theory and practice. A specific thesis question would not be, “How does illegal immigration influence the U.S. economy?” One could write thousands of pages on such a topic. Instead, a better question would be, “How do illegal immigrant hotel workers in Chicago impact the economy of Northern Illinois?” You would then want to do the research and determine the positive and negative impacts they have, ultimately trying to conclude how illegal immigration in this area should be approached ethically.

How to Hone Your Thesis: It is important that you start your research early in this course. Try to find the most important contemporary questions and theories in your field of study and then align the most important questions with a very specific aspect of the general topics above. For example, if you are a psychology major, you might want to start thinking within the realm of healthcare reform or aspects of mental health and criminality in the prison system.

Your Argument

You must present a complete argument, including a major claim with at least five points of evidence, information, or data that will prove the claim.

• The thesis statement must be
  • A clear, simple declarative sentence as the first or last sentence in the opening paragraph of the essay.
  • Of such a nature that it can be substantiated, corroborated, verified, and proved through appeal to primary or secondary academic research source materials.
• The introductory paragraph must
  • Present the thesis statement, an explanation for the importance of the topic, and its relation to the student’s field of study.
• Beliefs, opinions, and personal opinions must not be introduced at any point in the essay.
• All beliefs and opinions should be supported with academic evidence. Sweeping generalizations with no supporting academicevidence do not reflect adequate critical thinking skills.
• Do not include rhetorical questions in your essays. All the questions that are pertinent to your project need to be answered in your essay and your answers again need to be supported with evidence from peer-reviewed journal articles and academically published books.

Attributes of Good Critical Thinking in Papers

• Your paper should include academic sources that explain multiple sides of the issue.
• The evidence that you use should come from high-level researchers engaged in your field of study.
• Your interpretations of the evidence should be objective and state the conclusions and theses presented in the evidence clearly and fairly.
• Your paper should place the various forms of evidence in relation to one another and demonstrate why one form or perspective is stronger than the other positions that one could take on the issue.
• Your paper should point out the limitations of current evidence and attempt to indicate areas for future research.

Ethical Outcomes of the Position You Take

After you have defined the problem and created an argument about how one ought to respond to the issue, you need to explain the ethical outcomes of the position you have taken. This should again be in relation to the field of study in which you are working. There might be different ethical outcomes that result from your analysis. For example, going back to the example issue above, from an economic standpoint, illegal immigrants might contribute positively to the economy of Northern Illinois in a specific number of ways. Thus, an economist who believes that positive impact to the economy is the greatest good would say that one should promote the use of illegal immigrants. However, because these workers are often paid less than others and eliminate jobs that could be done by residents of Chicago, there could be other negative ethical outcomes that would outweigh the positive impacts to the economy. It is your goal to draw out the ethical implications of your thesis and explain the underlying rationale that is the foundation for your claim that one action is better than another.

• Critical thinkers are those who can outline the positive and negative ethical impacts of their positions. In addition, they are able to provide a rationale for why they believe a specific position is the right position, even when it leads to negative outcomes.
• Critical thinkers are also able to be honest and objective about the limitations and gray areas that pertain to their theses.

Final Research Project Requirements

The Final Research Project may be presented as a formal research paper (essay format), a PowerPoint presentation, a video, or a podcast equivalent to a minimum of 10 – 12 pages in APA format (approximately 3,300 – 3,900 typewritten words, excluding title page and reference pages). Written essays must adhere to all APA formatting standards and requirements, as outlined in the Ashford Writing Center.

PowerPoint presentations must include the full text (at least 3,300 words) in the speaker notes portion of the slides, with appropriate citations, and full reference pages. PowerPoint presentations must adhere to the basic principles of PowerPoint presentation design and must include citations and references according to APA standards and requirements.

Videos and podcasts must include a full transcript, in APA format, including appropriate in-text citations and a references page.

Quotations:

There must be no more than 15% quoted content in the body of your essay. All quoted material must bear quotation marks and a full quotation citation.

Source Documents:

• There must be 10 or more source documents used, cited, and referenced.
• Multimedia sources (such as videos) may be used, but no more than two such sources may be used. If multimedia sources are used, then they must be authored and distributed by credible sources, such as universities, law schools, medical schools, or professors, or found in the Ashford University Library.
• Where print documents are used for source materials, those must be peer-reviewed, scholarly journal articles, and academically published books. Popular media sources (e.g., newspapers, magazines, television and radio shows, etc.) may not be used. Materials from advocacy groups (e.g., Greenpeace, Human Rights Campaign, National Organization for Women, etc.) may not be used.
• Two of the peer-reviewed scholarly sources used must include statistical evidence, which must be accurately interpreted.
• Sites such as ProCon.org and Wikipedia should not be used.
• Religious texts are neither peer-reviewed nor scholarly and so may not be used in any way.

Summary Conclusion:

You must have a summary conclusion as the last paragraph(s) of the project, presenting the major point of the essay and the evidence supporting that point.

Word Count:

The content body of the project must be 3,300 words or more. The word count does not include anything in the title page, running header, or reference list. It is expected that you meet all logistical requirements of this paper.

Reference List:

• The list of references must include only those source documents that are cited within the body of the project.
• The project must fully comply with APA formatting standards and requirements as outlined in the Ashford Writing Center: title page, running header with page numbers, font face and size, line sp

INTERVENTION PROPOSAL

In Week Three, you created a literature review around the scenario that you selected in Week One. For the Week Six assignment, you will create an intervention proposal that contains a professional recommendation for the chosen case study. The Intervention Proposal should incorporate any feedback that the instructor provided in the Week Four Literature Review or Week Two Annotated Bibliography assignments.

In a 10- to 12-page paper (not including the title page or references page) the student will:

Briefly restate the problem from the chosen case study.

Compose a thesis statement that contains the student’s professional recommendation. The thesis statement should be located near the end of the second paragraph of the report.

Explain the relevant theories and empirical studies that have led to the student’s professional recommendation. The explanation must include evaluations of seven to eight, peer-reviewed articles from the Annotated Bibliography that was created in Week Two. At least one of these articles must be about a specific empirical study. In addition, the explanation must:

Evaluate each article (comparing and contrasting them with the other articles) and answer the following questions:

What was the researchers’ research question?

What was their hypothesis?

How many participants did they have?

Was the research design method appropriate for that particular hypothesis? Was it valid?

Did their findings support the hypothesis?

What are the implications?

What are the limitations?

Discuss the opposing sides to the student’s recommendation and explain:

Why it is relevant.

Why it should be considered.

Why it should be discounted for this recommendation.

Discuss any limitations or gaps in existing research.

Restate the professional recommendation in one to two concluding paragraphs.

The paper must include a title page and references page, and it must be formatted according to APA style as outlined

Organization tip: It is best to start with the least related and most broad article and move toward the most relevant. It can be helpful to think of the organization for this report as a funnel: The articles evaluated should get more and more specific and narrow in breadth throughout the report.

Language Note: This report is being written for an audience that is not familiar with the theories and material that are discussed. This means that the paper needs to be accessible to all individuals. All technical terms, acronyms, and theories should be explained and jargon should be avoided.

The Intervention Proposal

Must be 10 to 12 double-spaced pages in length (not including title and reference pages) and formatted according to APA style as outlined

Must include a separate title page with the following:

Title of paper

Student’s name

Course name and number

Instructor’s name

Date submitted

Must use at seven to eight peer-reviewed sources that were all written within the past ten years, in addition to any seminal works that should be included.

Must document all sources in APA style as outlined

Case Study 1: Forecasting

Due Week 5 and worth 75 points

Using the Northern College Health Services visit volume in Appendix 6-1 on page 113 of the textbook, for this assignment, you will be providing a forecast of the number of clinic visits for November 2008 using the average change, confidence interval, average percent change, moving averages, and exponential smoothing forecasting methods. Use the Internet or Strayer Library to research at least two (2) examples of the forecasting methods being used in health services organizations.

Write a two to three (2-3) page paper in which you:

1. Explain each step in the forecasting process for each method.
2. Provide a brief summary of your researched health services organizations implementing the forecasting methods.
3. Provide a forecast of the number of clinic visits for November 2008 using each method of the forecasting process.
4. Conclude which forecasting method provides the best forecast, and provide a rationale for your conclusion.

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:

• Evaluate forecasting strategies and methods.
• Use technology and information resources to research issues in quantitative methods for health services.
• Write clearly and concisely about quantitative methods for health services using proper writing mechanics.

Link to Book: http://english.360elib.com/datu/T/EM380758.pdf

Please complete the following two applied problems:

Problem 1:

Patricia is researching venues for a restaurant business. She is evaluating three major attributes that she considers important in her choice: taste, location, and price. The value she places on each attribute, however, differs according to what type of restaurant she is going to start. If she opens a restaurant in a suburban area of Los Angeles, then taste is the most important attribute, three times as important as location, and two times as important as price. If she opens a restaurant in the Los Angeles metropolitan area, then location becomes three times as important as taste and two times as important as price. She is considering two venues, respectively, a steak restaurant and a pizza restaurant, both of which are priced the same. She has rated each attribute on a scale of 1 to 100 for each of the two different types of restaurants.

Show all of your calculations and processes. Describe your answer for each question in complete sentences.

1. Which of the two options should Patricia pursue if she wants to open a restaurant in a suburban area of Los Angeles? Calculate the total expected utility from each restaurant option and compare. Graph is not required. Describe your answer, and show your calculations.
2. Which of the two options should she pick if she plans to open a restaurant in the Los Angeles metropolitan area? Describe your answer, and show your calculations.
3. Which option should she pursue if the probability of finding a restaurant venue in a suburban area can be reliably estimated as 0.7 and in a metropolitan area as 0.3? Describe your reasoning and show your calculations.
4. Provide a description of a scenario in which this kind of decision between two choices, based on weighing their underlying attributes, applies in the “real-world” business setting. Furthermore, what are the benefits and drawbacks, if any, to this method of decision making?

Problem 2:

The demand function for Newton’s Donuts has been estimated as follows:

Qx = -14 – 54Px + 45Py + 0.62Ax

where Qx represents thousands of donuts; Px is the price per donut; Py is the average price per donut of other brands of donuts; and Ax represents thousands of dollars spent on advertising Newton’s Donuts. The current values of the independent variables are Ax=120, Px=0.95, and Py=0.64.

Show all of your calculations and processes. Describe your answer for each question in complete sentences, whenever it is necessary.

1. Calculate the price elasticity of demand for Newton’s Donuts and describe what it means. Describe your answer and show your calculations.
2. Derive an expression for the inverse demand curve for Newton’s Donuts. Describe your answer and show your calculations.
3. If the cost of producing Newton’s Donuts is constant at $0.15 per donut, should they reduce the price