Article Analysis: Teacher Empowerment

 Article Analysis: Teacher Empowerment

What types of research is conducted in the article (either exploratory, explanatory, descriptive, program evaluation)?

The article conducts explanatory research. The article seeks to understand the hidden mechanisms between organizational/institutional characteristics and teacher empowerment.

What are the research hypothesis? Are the research hypotheses nondirectional or directional?

The research hypotheses are directional. The article explores how adopting 16 empowering leadership practices can improve the experienced empowerment of frontline public employees.

Are the null hypothesis stated or implied? If implied, please formulate the null hypothesis.

The null hypothesis is implied. The article does not seek to explore whether or not there is a relationship between organizational/institutional characteristics and teacher empowerment. Rather, it seeks to explore the direction of that relationship. The null hypothesis would be no relationship between organizational/institutional characteristics and teacher empowerment.

What is the unit of analysis of the study? Be sure to check the sample sizes (N) provided in Table 3 on page 11.

The unit of analysis for the study is the teacher. It looks at how teacher empowerment affects the teacher’s loyalty to their school, willingness to speak up with criticism or feedback, and capacity to experience professional growth.

What is the sample of the study? What is the population of the study that the researchers are generalizing the results to?

The study sample was drawn from a population of 168,585 teachers who were employed in 439 schools in a large metropolitan area in the southeastern United States. The study population was generalizable to a small sample size (N) of 4,834.

What is the level of measurement of the six dependent variables in the study (Six dimensions of empowerment)?

The level of measurement for the six dimensions of empowerment was ordinal. These dimensions were measured on a scale from 1 to 4, with 1 indicating that the respondent disagreed completely with the statement and 4 indicating that the respondent agreed.

Please see the p-value in table 4 (See Table 4 only). What level of significance are used in the article? Some p-values for the variables in the models are equal to zero (i.e., p<0.001). In these cases, can we be 100% certain that the difference found is due to a systemic influence of the independent variables and not due to chance? Why or why not?

The article uses a significance level of p<0.001, meaning that the difference found is due to a systemic influence of the independent variables and not due to chance. We can be 100% certain that the difference found is due to a systemic influence of the independent variables and not due to chance because the p-value is less than 0.001, meaning that there is a 1% or less chance that the difference found is due to chance.

References

Minsung Michael Kang, Soohyun Park & Lucy C. Sorensen (2021): Empowering the frontline: internal and external organizational antecedents of teacher empowerment, Public Management Review, DOI: 10.1080/14719037.2021.1919185