Chapter 14: Biostatistics Flashcards
This kind of data has a logical order with values that continuously increase or decrease by the same amount (e.g., a HR of 120 BPM is twice as fast as a HR of 60 BPM)?
Continuous data
What is the difference between interval and ratio data?
Interval data has no meaningful zero (zero does not equal none) and ratio data has a meaningful zero (zero equals none)
What are the two types of discrete/categorical data?
Nominal and ordinal data
Which type of categorical data sorts subjects into arbitrary categories (names), such as male and female (0=male, 1=female or 0=female, 1=male)
Nominal data
Which type of categorical data is ranked and has a logical order, such as a pain scale?
Ordinal data
The mean is preferred for ____ data that is ____ distributed
Continuous; normally
The median is preferred for ____ data or ____ data that is skewed
Ordinal; continuous
The mode is preferred for ____ data
Nominal
Indicates how spread out the data is and to what degree the data is dispersed away from the mean
Standard deviation
Data that is highly dispersed has a ___ standard deviation
larger
Large sample sets of continuous data tend to form a ____ distribution
Gaussian or normal “bell-shaped”
When the distribution of data is normal, the curve is ____
Symmetrical (half of the values are on the left side and half of the values are on the right side)
When the distribution of data is normal, the mean, median and mode are ____ (the same or different)
The same
When the distribution of data is normal, __% of values fall within 1 SD of the mean and __% of the values fall within 2 SD of the mean
68%; 95%
Skewed distributions where 68% of the values do not fall within 1 SD of the mean and the mean, median and mode are not the same value usually occurs when the sample size is ___ and/or there are ____ in the data
Small; outliers
When there are a small number of values, an outlier has a ____ (small or large) impact on the mean and the data becomes skewed
Large
The distortion of the central tendency caused by outliers is ____ (increased or decreased) by collecting more values
Decreased
When there are more low values in a data set and the outliers are the high values, data is skewed to the ____ (left or right)
Right (positive skew)
When there are more high values in a data set and the outliers are the low values, data is skewed to the ____ (left or right)
Left (negative skew)
_____ states that there is no statistically significant difference between groups & is what the researcher hopes to disprove or reject
The null hypothesis
______ is what the researcher tries to prove or accept
The alternate hypothesis
When investigators design a study, they select a maximum permissible error margin, called ____, which is the threshold for rejecting the null hypothesis
Alpha
In medical research, alpha is usually set at ___
5% or 0.05
If the alpha is set at 0.05 and the p-value is less than alpha (p <0.05), is the null hypothesis rejected or accepted? Is the result termed statistically significant or insignificant
Rejected; statistically significant
A confidence interval provides the same information about significance as the p-value, plus the _____ of the result
precision
If alpha is 0.05, what would the confidence interval be?
If alpha is 0.01, what would the confidence interval be?
95%; 99%
When comparing means (difference data), when is a result statistically significant in regards to the confidence interval?
When the CI does not include zero
Example:
- The 95% CI for the difference in FEV1 between two drugs is 18-58 –> does not include zero, therefore the result is statistically significant
- The 95% CI for the difference in FEV1/FVC is -0.26-0.89 –> includes zero, therefore the result is not statistically significant
When comparing ratio data (relative risk, odds ratio, hazard ratio), the result is statistically significant if the CI range does not include ___
One
A narrow confidence interval range implies ____ (high or low) precision.
A wide confidence interval range implies ____ (high or low) precision.
High; low
Is a type I error a false-positive or false-negative?
False-positive
When alpha is 0.05 and a study result is reported with p <0.05, it is statistically significant and the probability of a type I error is ____
<5%
Is a type II error a false-positive or false-negative?
False-negative
Power is the probability that a test will ____ (accept or reject) the null hypothesis correctly
Reject
When is power used?
To avoid type II error
How can study power be increased?
Have a larger sample size
If beta is set at 0.2, what is the power?
80% - there is a 20% chance of missing a true difference and making a type II error
What is the relative risk formula?
RR = risk in treatment group/ risk in control group
What is the risk formula?
Risk = number of subjects in group with an unfavorable event/ total number of subjects in group
RR = 1 (or 100%) implies ___ (greater, lower, no difference) risk of the outcome between the groups
no difference
RR > 1 (or 100%) implies ___ (greater, lower, no difference) risk of the outcome in the treatment group
greater