Week 3 Discussion: Case Study
Part A: Case Study-1, Challenging questions
Please review the case and share your though with the class, please post your discussion (one paragraph for each question) and remember to support your post with citations.
Two research assistants in a medical school need some advice. They have been junior members of a research team in the school for almost two years, working on a fixed term contract that expires in a few months. The research team in question is led by a professor in the same school and has been working on a single project. The project has recently been written up and is about to be published.
The research assistants tell you that they have carried out a variety of duties on the project, including providing technical assistance, doing literature searches, helping gather and organize primary data, preparing data for publication and supporting various networks and events.
Neither research assistant expected to be listed as an author in the published paper but both thought that their contribution to the project would be acknowledged in the article. However, the professor leading the research team has recently told them that they will not be listed in the paper’s acknowledgments section. The research assistants tell you that they are confused and upset by this.
According to them, they challenged the professor’s decision but were told, ‘research assistants are employed to work on research projects. We don’t list people in acknowledgements sections for simply doing what they are employed to do.’
The researchers ask for your views on whether the professor’s decision was correct. They stress that they are not seeking to be listed as authors on the paper but would like their contribution to the research to be acknowledged.
1) What should be done in response to the concerns ?
2) If what the research assistants say is true, do you agree with the professor’s decision and the reason for it?
3) Are there any other issues to consider?
Background:
Preparing a case study: A guide for designing and conducting a case study for evaluation input. Massachusetts: Pathfinder international.
http://www.pathfinder.org/publications-tools/pdfs/Preparing-a-Case-Study-A-Guide-for-Designing-and-Conducting-a-Case-Study-for-Evaluation-Input.pdf
Also see: http://www.who.int/management/district/monitoring_evaluation/en/
Exercise week-2: Calculating
Table-2 provides information for having lung cancer and smoking. Complete the table and answer the following questions.
1) Calculate the relative risk (RR)
2) Calculate oID-ratio
3) Calculate the relative risk reduction for this calculation suppose that a new medicine has
an RR or 0.45 for reducing hospitalization, is the medicine reduced the risk by 55%?
Please submit your response (use the discussion forum or as an attached file).
Table 2. Risk of lung cancer among smokers
Lung cancer Healthy Total
Smoker 39 29961
Non-Smoker 6 59994
Total
For students who are using Rstudio: there is epibasic package in the Rstudio (you can check your response using that package)
but for this exercise please try to compute using excel. I will also post the codes next Monday (please check the News page)
Backgrounds:
Estimating risk: http://ocw.jhsph.edu/courses/fundepiii/pdfs/lecture16.pdf
Categorical Data Analysis
http://courses.ncssm.edu/math/Stat_Inst/PDFS/Categorical%20Data%20Analysis.pdf

Part B:
Exercise#3
Using the data provided in table 2 (Click Exercise -3 to download data) or copy from here:
Length of Stay (LOS) by physician, 2009.
LOS
Patient Physician A Physician B
1 2 7
2 9 10
3 4 6
4 8 8
5 4 5
6 6 11
7 3 9
8 7 7
9 5 5
10 3 9
11 6 12
12 7 5
13 10 13
14 8 6
15 7 4
16 3 3

Exercise#3
Compare two means of LOS between physician A and B by using t-Test analysis.
Compare two means of LOS between physician A and B by using t-Test analysis and describe your finding (2-3 lines)