RDS statistics Flashcards
what is social accountability
re-orientate teaching and the research towards addressing the needs of the community that they’re based in.
what are the components of social accountability
involve patients, community members
who is benefiting from your research
addressing priority health and social needs
sustainability and best use of resources
define hypothesis
A prediction of what the answer to the research question may be
(stated at the outset of a piece of work)
types of hypothesis
Null hypothesis Alternative hypothesis (or several alternative hypotheses)
what is null hypothesis
states that there is no dependent relationship between two variables
e.g. Staying up all night before an exam will not affect exam performance
what is alternative hypothesis
predicts a specific and reproducible relationship between variables
e.g. Staying up all night before an exam will reduce exam performance
how is the hypothesis analysed
A statistical test is used to determine whether we can reject – or fail to reject the hypothesis.
what is the p value
likelihood that the observed difference (or something more extreme) was observed by chance.
what is the alpha value
is the probability of rejecting a null hypothesis when it is true.
For example, a significance level of 0.05 indicates a 5% risk of concluding that a difference exists when there is no actual difference. That is to say rejecting the hypothesis when it should not be rejected.
when is there a significant difference
Most authors would consider a p-value to indicate a significant difference when the probability is less than a = 0.05 (less than one in a twenty chance of being wrong)
A small p-value (p ≤ 0.05) indicates…..
strong evidence against the null hypothesis, so you reject the null hypothesis.
A large p-value (p > 0.05) indicates…..
weak evidence against the null hypothesis, so you fail to reject the null hypothesis.
If the p-value is equal to the a-value
we reject the null hypothesis
critical appraisal
critical appraisal
give an example of primary and secondary research outcomes with regards to Sipuleucel-T Immunotherapy for Castration-Resistant Prostate Cancer
primary outcome: effect of sipuleucel-T on overall survival among men with castration-resistant prostate cancer.
Secondary outcome: the effect of sipuleucel-T disease progression was observed.
which statistical tests can be used to assess for differences
e.g. “there is a difference exists between male and female systolic blood pressure”
Chi squared test ANOVA T-tests Kruskal-Wallis Wilcoxon Mann-Whitney U-test
which statistical tests can be used to assess for similarities (links)
e.g. taller people have larger feet
Chi squared test
Pearson
Spearman Rank
define quantitative data
numerical information about quantities
Magnitude, occurrence, association
quantitative data can be subdivided into:
Information that can be measured and have continuous dimensions
Information that can be counted but are not continuous
define Qualitative data
information about qualities; that is information that can’t actually be measured.
deals with descriptive information
Who? What? Why? When? How?
define and give examples of continuous data
data can be divided and reduced to finer and finer levels (measured)
height, temperature, blood pressure etc
define and give examples of discrete data
a count of that cannot be made more precise (counted)
number of children in a family or the number of patients in a clinic
define Categorical data
in-between quantitative and qualitative data because the ordinal aspects can be easily converted into numerical data.
give an example of categorical data
For example a scale on happiness can be given in numbers instead of words. Whereas nominal categorical data is more like qualitative data but the data consists of individual terms rather than sentences in qualitative data.
There are some variables that could be measured quantitatively or qualitatively such as….
eye colour can be measured quantitatively by assessing the RGB scale or qualitatively by categorising into blue, brown or green etc.
Categorical data can also be subdivided into two types:
nominal and ordinal
what is nominal data
items that are assigned individual named categories that do not have an implicit value .
e.g. gender (male or female) or fracture incidence (yes or no).
what is Ordinal data
items which are assigned to categories that do have some kind of implicit order, such as ‘small, medium, or large’
often used to describe a patient’s characteristics e.g. stage of hypertension, pain level, and satisfaction.
what does normality measure
the central tendency and dispersion of data and is used to decide how to describe the properties of large data-sets
normal distribution is often described as….
‘bell curved’ or ‘Gaussian’