Quote:
Argument: A recent study by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention found that employees with paid sick leave are 28 percent less likely to be involved in a work-related accident than employees who do not receive payment for sick leave. Researchers hypothesize that employees with unpaid sick leave feel pressured to work during time of illness for fear of lack of pay. On-the-job accidents are then spurred by impaired judgment or motor skills due to illness or illness-related medications. The highest-risk occupations, such as construction, showed the highest discrepancy between paid and unpaid leave.
Write a response in which you discuss what questions would need to be answered in order to determine whether the researchers’ hypothesis is reasonable. Be sure to explain what effects the answers to these questions would have on the validity of the hypothesis.
At first glance, the argument provided appears to be very intuitive and compelling. It provides a numerical figure and declares a fact about human behaviour that appears to make sense. However, before we accept this statement readily, there are a few questions that should be answered to validate the strength of the claim.
The biggest umbrella question among these is how this number was arrived at. Was it that employees in the same workplace were split into two homogenous groups where one group was given paid leaves and the other wasn’t? If not the same workplace, what were the other differences between the workplaces providing paid sick leaves and those that weren’t? Was at least the nature of the work same for all people observed? Apart from this, where, geographically, were these observations made? How big was the sample size? How much diversity was prevalent within each group?
The reason the aforementioned questions are important is that the answers to those would give us an idea about the accuracy and generizability of the results. If the study has been carried out locally, the results correspond with surety only to people from that area. If the nature of work for paid leave providers and those that don’t is different, the real cause of accidents might have something to do with the nature of the work.
A very important angle is this case is the spectrum of compensation received by the people involved in this study. If jobs providing a limit range of earning were observed, maybe this phenomenon is specific to those occupations. If employees who work at low paying jobs are compared with those who work at high paying jobs, the gap in income might be a more influencing factor in higher rates of illness or accidents at work in the former. After all it’s more probable that an employer who can pay better can also provide paid leaves.
The only case in which the statistic provided would have any substantial meaning would be if this study has been carried out across many geographical locations, cultures, financial brackets, and natures of work. It’s possible that people indeed succumb to accidents less if they are provided paid leaves. However, to substantiate such a claim, one would need to provide way more details about evidence that points to such a conclusion. Seeing the lack of the same, it is safe for us to assume that these results are a chance observation that may not be indicative of a fundamental human tendency.
15 Jul 2022, 07:10 
