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Question 1
Correct
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There is a measure of dispersion of a set of data from its mean. Which of following is the best term which can describe the above?
Your Answer: Standard deviation (root mean square deviation)
Explanation:Standard deviation is defined as the measure of dispersion of a set of data from its mean. It measures the absolute variability of a distribution; the higher the dispersion or variability, the greater is the standard deviation and greater will be the magnitude of the deviation of the value from their mean.
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This question is part of the following fields:
- Medicine
- Research Skills
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Question 2
Incorrect
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A case-control study is being designed to look at the relationship between eczema and a new vaccine for yellow fever. What is the usual outcome measure in a case-control study?
Your Answer: Absolute risk increase
Correct Answer: Odds ratio
Explanation:A case–control study (also known as case–referent study) is a type of observational study in which two existing groups differing in outcome are identified and compared on the basis of some supposed causal attribute. Case–control studies are often used to identify factors that may contribute to a medical condition by comparing subjects who have that condition/disease (the cases) with patients who do not have the condition/disease but are otherwise similar (the controls).An odds ratio (OR) is a statistic that quantifies the strength of the association between two events, A and B. The odds ratio is defined as the ratio of the odds of A in the presence of B and the odds of A in the absence of B or vice versa.
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This question is part of the following fields:
- Medicine
- Research Skills
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Question 3
Correct
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In a study, 50 out of 100 smokers developed lung cancers and 50 out of 200 non-smokers developed lung cancers. Which of the following is accurate?
Your Answer: Relative risk=2
Explanation:Relative risk = (Incidence in exposed group)/incidence in unexposed group). So in this case RR = (50/100)/(50/200) = 2.
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This question is part of the following fields:
- Medicine
- Research Skills
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Question 4
Correct
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Which one of the following statements best describes a type II statistical error?
Your Answer: The null hypothesis is accepted when it is false
Explanation:In statistical hypothesis testing there are 2 types of errors:- type I: the null hypothesis is rejected when it is true – i.e. Showing a difference between two groups when it doesn’t exist, a false positive. – type II: the null hypothesis is accepted when it is false – i.e. Failing to spot a difference when one really exists, a false negative.
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This question is part of the following fields:
- Medicine
- Research Skills
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Question 5
Correct
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A clinical trial is conducted to study the benefits of a new oral medication to improve the symptoms of patients with asthma. In the trial 400 patients with asthma, half were given the new medication and half a placebo. Three months later they are asked to rate their symptoms using the following scale: much improved, slight improvement, no change, slight worsening, significantly worse. What is the most appropriate statistical test to see whether the new medication is beneficial?
Your Answer: Mann-Whitney U test
Explanation:The type of significance test used depends on whether the data is parametric (can be measured, usually normally distributed) or non-parametric.Parametric tests:Student’s t-test – paired or unpaired*Pearson’s product-moment coefficient – correlationNon-parametric tests:Mann-Whitney U test – unpaired dataWilcoxon signed-rank test – compares two sets of observations on a single samplechi-squared test – used to compare proportions or percentagesSpearman, Kendall rank – correlation.The outcome measured is not normally distributed, i.e. it is non-parametric. This excludes the Student’s t-tests. We are not comparing percentages/proportions so the chi-squared test is excluded. The Mann–Whitney U test is a nonparametric test of the null hypothesis that it is equally likely that a randomly selected value from one sample will be less than or greater than a randomly selected value from a second sample.This test can be used to investigate whether two independent samples were selected from populations having the same distribution.
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This question is part of the following fields:
- Medicine
- Research Skills
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Question 6
Incorrect
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Which one of the following statements regarding epidemiological measures is correct?
Your Answer: The prevalence is the number of new cases per population in a given time period
Correct Answer: Cross-sectional surveys can be used to estimate the prevalence of a condition in the population
Explanation:The incidence rate is the number of new cases per population at risk in a given time period. For example, if a population initially contains 1,000 non-diseased persons and 28 develop a condition over two years of observation, the incidence proportion is 28 cases per 1,000 persons per two years, i.e. 2.8% per two years.Prevalence is the proportion of a particular population found to be affected by a medical condition (typically a disease or a risk factor such as smoking or seat-belt use). It is derived by comparing the number of people found to have the condition with the total number of people studied, and is usually expressed as a fraction, as a percentage, or as the number of cases per 10,000 or 100,000 people.Incidence should not be confused with prevalence, which is the proportion of cases in the population at a given time rather than rate of occurrence of new cases. Thus, incidence conveys information about the risk of contracting the disease, whereas prevalence indicates how widespread the disease is.
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This question is part of the following fields:
- Medicine
- Research Skills
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Question 7
Correct
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Choose the standard method for comparing distributions in data sets (such as between the expected frequency of an event and the observed frequency of an event) from the list of options.
Your Answer: Chi squared (X²) test
Explanation:The Chi-squared test evaluates if two variables are related. The other statistical tests mentioned do not perform this function.
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This question is part of the following fields:
- Medicine
- Research Skills
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Question 8
Correct
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A study is carried out to assess the efficacy of a new anti-epileptic drug for children with absence seizures. The total number of the children selected for the study was 400, from which 150 children were assigned to take the new drug and 250 children were assigned in the control group. After a period of four months, only 15 children taking the new drug had a seizure compared to 100 children from the control group who had seizure. What is the correct value regarding the relative risk reduction?
Your Answer: 75%
Explanation:Relative risk reduction (RRR) tells you by how much the treatment reduced the risk of bad outcomes relative to the control group who did not have the treatment. In the previous example, the relative risk reduction of fever and rash in the group of the children on the intervention was 40 per cent (1 – 0.6 = 0.4 or 40 per cent). RRR = (EER -CER) / CER = (0.1 – 0.4) / 0.4 = -0.75 or 75% reduction.
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This question is part of the following fields:
- Medicine
- Research Skills
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Question 9
Correct
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Which one of the following statements regarding the normal distribution is correct?
Your Answer: Mean = mode = median
Explanation:Normal distribution, also known as the Gaussian distribution, is a probability distribution that is symmetric about the mean. The normal distribution has the following properties:- It is symmetric around the mode, the median and the mean of the distribution.- It is unimodal- The area under the curve and over the x-axis is unity (i.e. equal to one).- Its density has two inflection points.- Its density is log-concave.The standard deviation (SD) is a measure of how much dispersion exists from the mean. SD = square root (variance)
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This question is part of the following fields:
- Medicine
- Research Skills
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Question 10
Incorrect
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There will be a proportion of people in a population who have the given condition, disease or attribute at a specified point in time or over a specified period of time. Which of following is the best term which can describe the above?
Your Answer:
Correct Answer: Prevalence
Explanation:Prevalence refers to the total number of cases of a particular disease or condition present in a population at a specific point in time or over a specified period. It provides a measure of how widespread the disease or condition is within the population.
Specificity and sensitivity are terms used to describe the accuracy of diagnostic tests.
Probability refers to the likelihood of an event occurring.
Incidence is a measure of how commonly or frequently a disease occurs in a specified population over a period by providing a quick measurement of new disease diagnoses.
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This question is part of the following fields:
- Medicine
- Research Skills
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SESSION STATS - PERFORMANCE PER SPECIALTY
