Does competition between separate research and development (R&D) teams in the U.S. Department of Defense, working independently on the same project, improve performance? To answer this question, performance ratings were assigned to each of 58 multisource (competitive) and 63 sole-source R&D contracts (IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management, Feb. 1990). With respect to quality of reports and products, the competitive contracts had a mean performance rating of 7.62, whereas the sole-source contracts had a mean of 6.95.

a. Set up the null and alternative hypothesis for determining whether the mean quality performance rating of competitive R&D contracts exceeds the mean for sole-source contracts.

b. Find the rejection region for the test using α = .05.

c. The p-value for the test was reported to be between .02 and .03. What is the appropriate conclusion?