| Course | BUSI 3014 Data Driven Decision Making Workplace Certificate |
|---|---|
| Week | Week 2 |
| Paper type | Question framing paper |
| Length | About 920 words, 6 pages |
| Format | APA 7 student paper |
| School | Walden University |
| Program | BS in Business Administration |
| Updated | October 2026 |
Free sample paper for BUSI 3014 Week 2
From "New People Call, and Then They Go Somewhere Else" to One Answerable Question: Framing a Pest Control Owner's Worry So a Year of Job Records Can Decide Whether to Add a Saturday Route
Student Name
Walden University
BUSI 3014: Data Driven Decision Making Workplace Certificate
Instructor Name
Month Day, Year
From "New People Call, and Then They Go Somewhere Else" to One Answerable Question: Framing a Pest Control Owner's Worry So a Year of Job Records Can Decide Whether to Add a Saturday Route
The Worry, in the Owner's Words
Kestrel Pest Solutions' owner (the firm is a composite Knoxville exterminator built for this course) put it this way at a staff meeting in February 2028: "New people call, and then they go somewhere else." The remark came up in a discussion of weekend service for the warm months, something he decides each March. As spoken, it expresses a fear rather than asking anything measurable. No dataset can answer it as it stands, because it does not say who counts as new, what going somewhere else means, or over what period.
This paper rewrites the worry, step by step, until it becomes a question the company's own records can answer and whose answer would change the Saturday route decision.
The Claims Inside the Worry
The sentence contains at least three separate claims:
1. New callers wait too long for a first visit.
2. Waiting is the reason they leave for a competitor.
3. More of them are leaving than before.
Each would need different records. The first needs request and visit dates, which the job management system stores. The second needs to know why customers left, which the company does not record; it would need a survey or the dispatcher's notes on cancellation calls. The third needs comparable figures for at least two years.
The second claim is the causal guess, and it is the weakest part of the worry. Customers may leave for price, for a neighbor's recommendation or because the pests went away. Proving that waiting causes leaving would take data the company does not have.
The Claim Worth Testing
The first claim is the one worth testing now, for two reasons. It can be answered with records the company already has, and it is the claim the Saturday route would actually address. A Saturday route adds visit capacity; it can shorten waits, but it cannot change prices or neighbors' opinions. If new callers are not waiting long, a Saturday route is unlikely to keep them, whatever else is causing them to leave.
Narrowing to a Question
Turning the first claim into a question requires four decisions.
Who is counted. New residential requests: people who are not current customers and ask for a first treatment at a home. Existing customers' quarterly visits are excluded because they are scheduled in advance, and commercial accounts are excluded because they run on contracts.
What is measured. The time from when the request is logged to the first completed treatment visit, in business days. Next week's assignment will define this precisely.
Over what period, compared with what. April through September, the months a Saturday route would run, compared with October through March, using 2027, the most recent complete year.
What threshold matters. The owner says that in his experience, callers who wait more than four business days start phoning other companies. That figure is his, not a finding, but it gives the question a cutoff the decision can use.
The Framed Question
In 2027, what share of new residential requests waited more than four business days for a first completed visit between April and September, compared with October through March?
The decision rule follows from it. If the peak-month share is well above the off-peak share and above about one in five requests, the waits are concentrated in exactly the months a Saturday route would cover, and a trial route is worth its cost. If the shares are similar or low, waiting is not the problem the owner fears, and the Saturday route would spend money on a cause that is not there.
Why Not Frame the Question Around Leaving
A tempting alternative was to frame the question around customer loss directly: what share of new callers in 2027 never became customers? That number would speak to the owner's fear more vividly. But it would mix several causes together, since a caller may not become a customer because of price, because the problem resolved or because a neighbor recommended someone else. A Saturday route can only change one of those causes. Framing the question around waiting keeps the analysis tied to the lever the owner is actually deciding whether to pull. Cancellations will still be counted, as a separate figure, so the leaving part of the worry is not lost.
Checking the Question Against the Worry
Read back against the owner's sentence, the framed question answers the part of the worry that a Saturday route can change. It does not answer whether waiting causes people to leave, and the paper says so openly. In the account by Provost and Fawcett (2013), a data-driven decision leans on analysis of records instead of instinct; here, the analysis can inform the route decision without pretending to prove the owner's whole theory. Ridgway (1956) cautioned that measures chosen without regard to purpose can mislead; framing the question around the decision is a way to avoid that.
What Data Will Be Needed
The job management system can export every request for 2027 with the logged date, customer type, the date of the first completed treatment, and notes on rescheduling and cancellations. Wang and Strong (1996) define data quality as fitness for use by the people who rely on the data, and the export will need an audit for exactly that reason before any share is computed.
References
Provost, F., & Fawcett, T. (2013). Data science and its relationship to big data and data-driven decision making. Big Data, 1(1), 51-59. https://doi.org/10.1089/big.2013.1508
Ridgway, V. F. (1956). Dysfunctional consequences of performance measurements. Administrative Science Quarterly, 1(2), 240-247. https://doi.org/10.2307/2390989
Wang, R. Y., & Strong, D. M. (1996). Beyond accuracy: What data quality means to data consumers. Journal of Management Information Systems, 12(4), 5-33. https://doi.org/10.1080/07421222.1996.11518099
BUSI 3014 Week 2 instructions, in plain terms
In Week 2 you take a worry someone at work has expressed and rewrite it as a question that available data could answer. Start by quoting the worry in the person's own words, so the final question can be checked against it. Then break it into the separate claims it contains; most worries bundle a fact, a suspected cause and a trend. Choose the claim worth testing, explaining why, often because it can be answered with existing records and because it is the one the pending decision would change. Narrow it by deciding who is counted, what is measured, over what period, compared with what and against what threshold. State the final question in one sentence and the decision rule it supports. Two to three pages under short headings is typical.
How this BUSI 3014 Week 2 example is built
The paper opens with the owner's sentence from a February staff meeting and the March decision it relates to. A section lists three claims and notes which records each would need. The paper sets aside the causal claim, that waiting makes people leave, because the company does not record reasons for leaving. It chooses the waiting claim because a Saturday route can change it. Four decisions narrow it: new residential requests, time from logging to first completed treatment, April to September against October to March in 2027, and more than four business days. The framed question and a decision rule follow. A short section explains why the question is not framed around customer loss, and a check against the original worry cites Provost and Fawcett and Ridgway. Wang and Strong introduce the coming audit.
BUSI 3014 Week 2 rubric: what earns full marks
Framing papers earn their marks by keeping the owner's concern recognizable while making it answerable. The worry should appear in its original words, and the final question should be checked against it. Graders look closely at the step that separates claims, because that is where most of the thinking happens; papers that jump from worry to question skip the analysis. Choosing which claim to test should be justified by the data available and the decision pending. The final question must specify population, measure, period, comparison and, where relevant, a threshold, so that two analysts would compute the same answer. A decision rule linking possible answers to actions shows the purpose of the exercise. Honesty about what the question leaves unanswered adds credibility.
BUSI 3014 Week 2 help: mistakes that cost marks
Write down the worry exactly as it was said. Next, list everything that must hold for the worry to be correct, one claim per line. For each claim, ask what records would answer it and whether you have them. Pick the claim that is both answerable and tied to the decision at hand. Narrow it by filling in who, what, when, compared with what and what threshold. Weak submissions rewrite the worry into analyst language until the owner would not recognize it, or produce a question no available dataset could answer. Others never say how the answer would change a decision. If you need a model question framing for a concern at your workplace, share the worry and the decision it relates to.
Get a BUSI 3014 Week 2 example written to your instructions
Share the Week 2 prompt and your rubric; a framed question with its supporting sections arrives within 24 to 48 hours, and the first costs nothing. Supplied a business scenario? Attach it, and the worry is taken from that case rather than invented. No scenario at all means the sample invents a composite small firm.
More BUSI 3014 papers and BS in Business Administration samples
- BUSI 3014 Week 1: Decision and Figure Discussion Post
- BUSI 3014 Week 3: Operational Measure Definition
- BUSI 3014 Week 4: Data Quality Audit
- BUSI 3014 Week 5: Measure Fit Peer Replies
- BUSI 3014 Week 6: Descriptive Statistics Summary
- BUSI 3014 Week 7: Misleading Chart Critique
- BUSI 3014 Week 8: Seasonal Trend Read
- BUSI 3014 Week 9: Dashboard Read for a Decision
- BUSI 3014 Week 10: One-Page Decision Memo
- BUSI 3014 Week 11: Final Data Analysis Report
- BUSI 3010 Week 2: Swimlane Process Map
BUSI 3014 Week 2 questions, answered
Where can I find a free BUSI 3014 Week 2 sample paper?
You can read the whole question-framing paper, from the quoted worry to the decision rule, further down this page at no cost.
What worry does the BUSI 3014 Week 2 example start from?
A pest control owner's sentence: "New people call, and then they go somewhere else."
What claims does the paper find inside the worry?
That new callers wait too long, that waiting makes them leave and that more of them are leaving than before.
Which claim is tested, and why?
The waiting claim, because job records can answer it and because a Saturday route is the decision that could change it.
What is the final framed question?
In 2027, what share of new residential requests waited more than four business days for a first visit from April to September, compared with October to March?