The Minority Business Development Agency’s Practices
During the last decade, the officials have allocated a significant share of the budget to ensure equality and inclusion of all American citizens. Nonetheless, even though there is some progress in this field, the problem of inequality and lack of diversity and inclusion remains topical. One of the illustrations of this is the operation of minority businesses in the US. The dissertation addresses the topic of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) practices. More precisely, the study analyzes the impact of executive orders on the implementation of DEI programming and federal agencies. The dissertation aims at estimating the Minority Business Development Agency’s (MBDA) effectiveness in implementing DEI practices and the agency’s future impact since statutory authorization in 2021. In the present assignment, the purpose of the author is to identify appropriate data collection strategies, describe the sampling procedures, measures, and measurement issues.
Data Collection Strategies
The author is concerned with revealing the consequences of the MBDA becoming a statutory agency under congress and the impacts of the last two presidential administrations on the MBDA’s implementation and funding. To find information applicable to the issue of the MBDA’s effects, the author needs to conduct interviews with the experts in the field of DEI programming and the administrative staff members of the MBDA per se. It would be insightful to contact, for example, Miguel EstiĂ©n, MBDA’s acting national director, Efrain Gonzalez Jr., MBDA’s associate director, and Roberto Lopez, MBDA’s chief administrative officer. The experts could be contacted personally or via emails, telephone, and platforms such as Skype or Zoom. Even though the best way to conduct interviews is face-to-face communication, due to COVID-19 restrictions and the schedule of participants, it is more convenient to use video conferencing since it allows “greater flexibility in time and location of data collection” (Lobe et al., 2020, p. 1). Overall, an interview would assist in collecting information regarding the expected effects of the MBDA’s becoming a statutory agency from people who manage its operation.
Another data collection strategy to be applied in the dissertation is the analysis of official websites in search of the laws and orders related to the issue of the MBDA. The author wants to know how the administrations of Donald Trump and Joe Biden influenced the MBDA’s implementation and funding. Therefore, the most effective way to do it is to check official documents released by the administrations of Trump and Biden. In addition to that, it is necessary to conduct secondary sources analysis to see what other scholars and journalists think of the role of Trump and Biden in the MBDA’s performance and development. Since such information might be subjective, it is necessary to critically evaluate and compare it.
To estimate the overall effectiveness of the implementation of DEI programming and federal agencies, the author would conduct a survey among people who represent minority groups. The questionnaire that would be distributed would contain multiple-choice, rating scales, and open questions. The purpose of the described survey is to see how the political changes related to the MBDA affect common representatives of minorities living in the US.
Sampling Procedures
The participants of interviews will be selected depending on their status in the MBDA and their expertise in the field of DEI. In other words, the researcher would apply the purposive sampling method and select the interviewees personally depending on their position and the level of expertise. The sample for the survey would be selected via the application of a stratified sampling technique. The population will be divided into strata, and then, the author will apply simple random sampling among people who are engaged in the entrepreneurial activities within these strata. In the case of the current study, each stratum is a minority group. The subgroups will include people of different races, ethnicities, and physical abilities. Within those groups, the author would distribute questionaries among randomly selected people related to minority businesses.
Measures
To measure a data set based on the results of a survey, the author would detect mean values of the answers on questions on ranking and modes for the answers on multiple-choice and open questions. For example, the participants will be asked to estimate the effectiveness of the MBDA. Thus, it is necessary to see the mean value to understand how most of the sampling approach this agency. In answers to open questions, multiple-choice questions, and interviews, the author would detect the most frequently proclaimed ideas, i.e., mode. Detecting a mode is a way to cast aside extreme views and continue working and analyzing the most popular opinions. The data set based on the results of official documents analysis will be measured according to several criteria. The first criterion is the content of the law or order related to the MBDA. The second criterion is the number of regulations on the MBDA issued by the administrations of Donald Trump and Joe Biden.
Measurement Issues
The study of Murrell and Bangs (2019) addresses the topic of diversity and inclusion and discusses the problem of disparities for women in minority businesses. The authors conducted a survey among 72 minority businesses to detect the most prevalent barriers that prevent them from getting contracts (Murrell and Bangs, 2019). The most popular obstacles include the lack of the right contacts, the inability to get the necessary information on time, and the high cost of preparations for bids. From the first glance, it seems that there are no flaws in this survey and no issues with the described measurements. Nonetheless, the problem is that it is unclear how the surveyed minority businesses were selected and whether the results of the survey could be scaled to the entire population. More precisely, the problem is that it is unclear whether the surveyed minority businesses are somehow related to women or these are just enterprises in communities of minorities. Therefore, it is confusing whether the described barriers are faced to a similar extent by all minority businesses that exist in American society.
The issue found in the article of Murrell and Bangs (2019) could be referred to as a reliability problem. Even though the data seems trustworthy, there are concerns on whether this data accurately represents the study population. From one point of view, the findings seem logical and do not provoke any doubts about their applicability. Nonetheless, the question is whether the barriers described in the survey results of Murrell and Bangs (2019) are the same for minority businesses owned by women and the rest of minority business enterprises. The authors could have fixed this inconsistency by adding clarifications and descriptions of the minority business enterprises that constituted the sample of the study.
References
Lobe, B., Morgan, D., & Hoffman, K. A. (2020). Qualitative data collection in an era of social distancing. International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 19, 1–8.
Murrell, A. J., & Bangs, R. (2019). Reducing disparities for women and minority business in public contracting work: A call for social virtuousness. Frontiers in Psychology, 10, 1-9.