Required Reading And Resources For Disease Control Centers ✓ Solved

Required Reading And Resourcescenters For Disease Control And

HOMEWORK ASSIGNMENT: Part I (approximately 1–1½ pages, total): Copy and paste the following examples (1-6 below), then respond by classifying each of the following variables as either: nominal, ordinal, interval, or ratio. Provide a brief explanation where indicated.

1. A researcher studying lifespan categorizes individuals into single, married, divorced, or widowed. What type of variable measurement is this?

2. A cognitive scientist places her subjects into categories based on how anxious they tell her that they are feeling: “not anxious,” “mildly anxious,” “moderately anxious,” and “severely anxious,” and she uses the numbers 0, 1, 2 and 3 to label categories where lower numbers indicate less anxiety. What type of variable measurement is this? Are the categories mutually exclusive?

3. A Physician diagnoses the presence or absence of disease (i.e., yes or no). What type of variable measurement is this?

4. A person weighing 200 lbs. is considered to be twice as heavy as a person weighing 100 lbs. In this case, what type of measurement is body weight?

5. A nurse takes measurements of body temperature on patients and reports them in units of degrees Fahrenheit as part of a study. What type of variable measurement is this?

6. Patients rate their experience in the emergency room on a five-point scale from poor to excellent (1 = very poor, 2 = not very good, 3 = neither good nor bad, 4 = quite good, and 5 = excellent). What type of variable measurement is this? Is the difference between a 1 and a 2 necessarily the same as the difference between a 3 and a 4? Explain briefly.

Part II: Statistics (1/2 page) Given what you’ve learned in this module about the meaning of “statistics,” choose one of the examples from Part I (1-6), and raise a relevant question of your own that could be answered by a statistician. Then without answering your own question, explain how a pattern could be studied or a useful prediction made based on data that are to be collected.

Part III: Quantitative vs. Qualitative Data (approximately 1–1½ pages) A health scientist wishes to measure how well participants diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder are coping. Explain how a variable such as coping could be measured quantitatively or qualitatively.

Paper For Above Instructions

Part I

1. The variable measurement for the categorization of individuals into single, married, divorced, or widowed is nominal. Nominal variables are used for labeling categories without any quantitative value. They represent different categories and do not have a natural order or ranking.

2. The cognitive scientist's categorization of anxiety levels is an ordinal variable. Ordinal variables allow for a ranking of the data (from not anxious to severely anxious), but the intervals between the ranks are not consistent or measurable. The categories are indeed mutually exclusive, as a person cannot belong to more than one category at the same time.

3. The diagnosis of the presence or absence of disease is a nominal variable. Like the previous examples, it is categorical and does not carry any quantitative value. The two categories—yes or no—are exclusive and collectively exhaustive.

4. Body weight is measured as a ratio variable. Ratio variables have a meaningful zero point and allow for the comparison of magnitudes. In this case, if a person weighs 200 lbs., they are indeed twice as heavy as someone who weighs 100 lbs., indicating that you can perform mathematical operations on the data.

5. The measurement of body temperature in degrees Fahrenheit is an interval variable. While it can be quantified and measured, it lacks a true zero point (0 degrees Fahrenheit does not reflect the absence of temperature). Therefore, while comparisons can be made (e.g., one temperature is higher than another), ratio calculations (stating one is twice as hot) do not hold true.

6. The emergency room experience rating is considered an ordinal variable. The five-point scale allows for ranking (from very poor to excellent), but like anxiety categories, it does not guarantee equal intervals between the points. The difference between a rating of 1 and 2 is not necessarily the same as between 3 and 4; personal perceptions of these categories might vary widely.

Part II

For Part II, I will raise a question based on the variable measurement of anxiety levels from the cognitive scientist's study. The question could be: “Does a higher reported level of anxiety correlate with a longer duration for recovery in individuals post-therapy?” To study this question, data could be collected from therapy participants regarding their anxiety levels before and after treatment. Further, recovery durations could also be tracked. A quantitative analysis could then be performed to look for any significant correlation between the two variables. Such analysis might include regression models to predict recovery time based on anxiety levels.

Part III

In measuring how well participants diagnosed with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) are coping, both quantitative and qualitative methods can be used. Quantitatively, measures could assess coping through surveys that use validated scales, such as the Coping Inventory for Stressful Situations (CISS), which provides numerical scores reflecting coping strategies (Endler & Parker, 1990). Qualitatively, in-depth interviews could collect personal narratives detailing the strategies that individuals utilize to cope with symptoms of PTSD. This method allows for richer, contextual insight into the individual's coping mechanisms, which can be pivotal in understanding the subjective aspect of mental health diagnosis.

References

• Cook, A., Netuveli, G., & Sheikh, A. (2004). Basic skills in statistics: A guide for healthcare professionals. London, GBR: Class Publishing.
• Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC]. (2012). Principles of epidemiology in public health practice [3rd ed.].
• Statistics Learning Centre. (2011, December 13). Types of data: Nominal, ordinal, interval/ratio [video file].
• Norman, G. R., & Streiner, D. L. (2014). Biostatistics: The bare essentials [4th ed.]. Shelton, Connecticut: PMPH-USA, Ltd.
• Partners in Information Access for the Public Health Workforce. (2016, August 9). Health data tools and statistics.
• Endler, N. S., & Parker, J. D. A. (1990). Coping Inventory for Stressful Situations (CISS).
• Folkman, S., & Moskowitz, J. T. (2004). Coping: Pitfalls and promise. Annual Review of Psychology, 55, 745-774.
• Scharwachter, J., & Peters, J. (2012). The relationship between coping strategies and quality of life in patients with PTSD. Psychological Reorts, 110(1), 177-187.
• Weiss, D. S., & Marmar, C. R. (1997). The Impact of Event Scale–Revised. In J. P. Wilson & T. M. Keane (Eds.), Assessing psychological trauma and PTSD (pp. 399-411). New York: Guilford Press.
• Culpepper, L., & Zisook, S. (2007). The Cognitive Triad in the Treatment of Depression and Anxiety Disorders. Psychiatric Clinics of North America, 30(2), 253-265.