The question

When I was young, my mother used to bring me to the barber. When it was crowded (with more than 3 people) waiting down the line, my mother would bring me back home and come back another day. She believed that when the business is good, the barber will spend less time cutting and the resulting haircut will also be not nice.

I believe many people also hold this belief. Is this a myth or really unfounded?

So in this study, I want to find out

Do barbers (hairstylists) spend less time cutting patron’s hair during peak or busy hours as compared to off-peak hours?

Are haircuts during non-busy hours ‘better in quality’ than haircuts made during busy hours?

The Hypothesis

Hairstylists spend less time cutting each patron’s hair during peak hours as compared to non peak hours. In other words, they cut faster.

Patrons receiving haircuts during off-peak hours will be rated as better looking than patrons who received haircuts during peak hours.

The Method

For this study, I will use data taken from K-cuts at Westgate over two weekdays. Weekdays are chosen because weekends tend to be busy throughout. This branch is chosen as there is only one hairstylist during weekdays. A non-peak (non-busy) hour is defined by a time when there is at most 1 patron in the salon and a peak (or busy) hour is defined by a time when there are at least 3 patrons waiting in the queue for the hairstylist. All other variations (times where there are between 1-3 patrons in the salon) will not be considered for this study.

After having obtained consent from the manager of the branch, we will collect the time taken for the hairstylist to cut the hair of each patron by reviewing their surveillance camera footage. We note that the hairstylist must be blind to the study as knowledge of this will definitely cause him or her to become conscious of his/ her work and this will affect the timings recorded.

Patrons entering the salon during non-peak hours are now collectively called Group A participants and patrons entering the salon during peak hours are now collectively called Group B participants.

After the participants of both groups have received their haircuts, we will explain the purpose of the study and obtain their permission to have their picture(s) taken. These pictures will be randomly mixed and shown to 20 independent raters (also blind to study) who will rate the participants based on their appearance.

Ideally, we will have 20 participants from each group.

The Analysis

To answer the first question, we will compute the time used to cut Group A’s hair and group B’s hair and compare the mean of the two groups. This is a between subjects design. The data can be processed using a t-test. If p<0.05, the alternate hypothesis is true.

To answer the second question, we will compute the average score by the 20 independent raters on the appearance of the participants and make a comparison using a t-test. If p< 0.05, the alternate hypothesis is true.

Also, we can correlate the timings of each haircut and the rating received to see if there is a correlation between the two, which can also indirectly answer our original question.

Evaluation

While there are many variables that cannot be controlled (such as the original length of hair of each participant), I have decided to conduct the study in a non-laboratory setting to preserve the ecological (external) validity. After all, we are interested to know if the hypotheses hold true in the real world setting. We note, however, that in this study, there is reduced control and that the sampling is convenience sampling.

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