Locate an example of a research study that uses statistical tests. List the statistical tests that are used, and explain what each one allows the researchers to accomplish and/or conclude in the study.
Respond to…
Locate an example of a research study that uses statistical tests. List the statistical tests that are used, and explain what each one allows the researchers to accomplish and/or conclude in the study.
This research study hypothesizes that there are gender differences in depression in patients hospitalized for Acute Coronary Syndrome (ACS) (Frazier, L., Yu, E., Sanner, J., & et al., 2012). “This was a cross-sectional observational study with a convenience sample of 789 adults (248 females and 541 males) hospitalized for ACS. The study included all participants meeting the inclusion criteria of a larger study looking at the interactions of genetics and depression on ACS outcomes. The overall rate for males versus females was consistent with the gender ratio for ACS admitted to the facility. Participants were recruited during hospital admission for ACS and were screened for self-reported depressive symptoms, by trained research nurses, using the BDIII. Depression was defined as a BDIII score of ≥14 indicating at least moderate symptoms of depression (Frazier, L., Yu, E., Sanner, J., & et al., 2012).” The depression was rated the same and defined what the scores mean to keep the study consistent. “Pearson chisquare tests for independence (categorical variables) orttests for independent samples (continuous variables) were used to examine differences in demographic characteristics between males and females. Comparisons of depression ordinal scores and symptoms by gender were conducted with Wilcoxon rank sum and Pearson chisquare tests for independence, respectively. Degrees of freedom for the Pearson chisquare test was defined as follows: (r1) x (c1), where= the number of rows and c= the number of columns. The significance level was set at P < 0.05. Data were analyzed using SAS 9.2 statistical software (Frazier, L., Yu, E., Sanner, J., & et al., 2012).” The chisquare was used for testing the relationships between the variables. The ttests were used to determine if there is a significant difference between the two groups. In this study, the chisquare test and ttests were used for the demographic characteristics of males and females. “The prevalence of depression in this study was significantly higher in the females (35%) than males (22%) (BDIII scores ≥ 14). Of the 21 depressive symptoms evaluated by the BDIII, 19 depressive symptoms were reported more frequently by females; 7 out of the 19 symptoms reaching statistical significance (P < 0.05).” The research study used tables to show the comparisons. The results also found similar patterns in the depressive symptoms from the research study and some depressive symptoms were discovered as the cause of the ACS event. The results proved that the hypothesis was correct in the gender differences in depression with patients in the hospital for ACS. The somatic symptoms are indicators of depression among the ACS patients, especially for the females. The ability to diagnose and test depression in these patients is an important intervention to decrease subsequent ACS events for these patients. The research study did say that there would need to be more future tests needed to identify the biological and psychological mechanisms to explain the reason for the gender differences (Frazier, L., Yu, E., Sanner, J., & et al, 2012).
References
Lorraine Frazier, Erica Yu, Jennifer Sanner. (2012). et al., “Gender Differences in Self-Reported Symptoms of Depression among Patients with Acute Coronary Syndrome,”Nursing Research and Practice, vol. 2012, Article ID 109251, 5 pages, 2012.https://doi.org/10.1155/2012/109251
Respond to…
Research paper has been analyzed in order to study statistical techniques that have been used for carrying out analysis. Topic of the research is on how training carries impact on performance of employees working in the telecommunication sector (Iqbal, Ahmad & Javaid, 2014). Main statistical tools that were utilized in the research included SPSS and ANOVA. SPSS is a powerful tool which helps understand relation that is present between different variables in the study. Different approaches are present to regression analysis but core purpose is to establish relationship between variables. It can be seen in the research paper being analyzed that SPSS aims to establish relation between variables such as training, salary, involvement and performance. This makes it easier to understand which variable carries the least impact and most impact. It was found in the research that more emphasis should be put on education of employees through which long term improvement can be obtained in performance of employees. ANOVA test is a tool applied to determine if mean of two or more groups are significantly different from each other or not. Impact is found out by comparing means of different samples. ANOVA table has been used in almost all relations being analyzed between variables where it tells whether relation holds true or not. This tells how much valid one calculation is and whether it can be applied in the general or not.
References
Iqbal, N., Ahmad, N., & Javaid, K. (2014). Impact of Training on Employee Performance in the context of Telecommunication sector of DG Khan,(Pakistan). International letters of social and humanistic sciences, 17, 60-73.
