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Question 1
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 2
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 3
Correct
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A case-control study is developed to assess passive smoking as a risk factor for the development of asthma in children. The total number of patients recruited for this study is 200. 40 out of the 200 patients report at least one parent smoking in the house when they were younger. 200 more people without asthma are recruited and 20 out of them report that at least one parent smoked in the house when they were younger. What is the odds ratio of patients with asthma having been exposed to passive smoking during their childhood?
Your Answer: 2.25
Explanation:An odds ratio (OR) is a measure of association between an exposure and an outcome. The OR represents the odds that an outcome will occur given a particular exposure, compared to the odds of the outcome occurring in the absence of that exposure. Odds ratios are most commonly used in case-control studies, however they can also be used in cross-sectional and cohort study designs as well (with some modifications and/or assumptions). Wherea = Number of exposed casesb = Number of exposed non-casesc = Number of unexposed casesd = Number of unexposed non-casesOR=(a/c) / (b/d) = ad/bc
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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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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: Incidence
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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Question 5
Correct
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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: 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 6
Correct
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Which one of the following statements regarding epidemiological measures is correct?
Your 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
Incorrect
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Which one of the following statements best describes a type II statistical error?
Your Answer: The null hypothesis is rejected when it is true
Correct 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 8
Incorrect
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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: Specificity
Correct 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 9
Correct
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What is the correct formula to calculate the positive predictive value?(TP = true positive; FP = false positive; TN = true negative; FN = false negative)
Your Answer: TP / (TP + FP)
Explanation:Positive predictive value is the probability that subjects with a positive screening test truly have the disease.Positive predictive value = true positive / ( true positive + false positive)
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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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A study is developed to look at the potential of hip protectors to reduce femoral neck fractures in elderly nursing home patients. The study included 800 patients randomly selected with an average age of 82 years of age. The data was collected over a two year period and the patients were randomly put in the standard care group or the hip protector group. From the 400 patients assigned to the hip protector group, 10 had a femoral neck fracture over the two year period. From the 400 patients assigned to the standard care group, 20 had a femoral neck fracture over the two year period. What is the correct value regarding the absolute risk reduction?
Your Answer: 10
Correct Answer: 0.025
Explanation:Absolute risk reduction (ARR) – also called risk difference (RD) – is the most useful way of presenting research results to help your decision-making. In this example, the ARR is 8 per cent (20 per cent – 12 per cent = 8 per cent). This means that, if 100 children were treated, 8 would be prevented from developing bad outcomes. Another way of expressing this is the number needed to treat (NNT). If 8 children out of 100 benefit from treatment, the NNT for one child to benefit is about 13 (100 ÷ 8 = 12.5). CER = 20 / 400 = 1 / 20 = 0.05, EER = 10 / 400 = 0.025, ARR =CER – EER = 0.025
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This question is part of the following fields:
- Medicine
- Research Skills
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SESSION STATS - PERFORMANCE PER SPECIALTY
