An industrial/organizational psychologist wants to improve worker productivity for a client firm, but first she needs to gain a better understanding of the life of the typical white-collar professional. Fortunately, she has access to the 2008 Workplace Productivity Survey, commissioned by LexisNexis and prepared by WorldOne Research, which surveyed a sample of 650 white-collar professionals (250 legal professionals and 400 other professionals).
One of the survey questions was, “How many work-related emails do you receive during a typical workday?” For the subsample of legal professionals (n = 250), the mean response was M = 36.7 emails, with a sample standard deviation of s = 24.3 emails.