My Critique of the HR Professional article “HR and the MBA” January 2013 Issue

I am very wary of when I get to read an article that quotes statistics and numbers, because they can be skewed in any direction that you want. This is usually done by omission and by interpreting insufficient data. This article does not push readers to any particular conclusion, by just saying that MBA is a personal choice, which in my opinion was evident before the survey. However the way the survey was reported leaves more to be desired.

First of all it does not identify their sample, “840 HR Professionals were contacted” can be very diverse or homogenous. What’s the response rate?, what’s the demographics breakdown? Is that a sufficient sample size for the population?. I don’t know any of this. Frankly, I started to skim through the rest of the article after not finding these facts reported in the article. These are the basics of covering the survey. I expect to find this kind of reporting in the professional magazine.