Customer service training

As the Director of Quality & Patient Safety at a mid-sized community hospital, I wish to see improvement in patient satisfaction. I have identified a brief customer service training being used at other hospitals and I wish to test its effectiveness with front-line staff who interact directly with patients and their caregivers to see if there will be an improvement in patient satisfaction scores. The intervention is a three-hour training that addresses tone of voice, eye contact, compassion, and managing conflict. I invite 30 staff members to participate and 15 of them choose to enroll in my study. I examine patient satisfaction scores before the intervention and one week after the intervention.

1) Is this a randomized controlled trial (classic experimental design)? Why or why not?

2) Explain how one confounder (threat to internal validity) could affect the results of my study.

3) What is the independent variable? What is the dependent variable?

4) Suggest at least one way in which I can ensure more rigor in my study (improve internal validity).