/*! This file is auto-generated */ .wp-block-button__link{color:#fff;background-color:#32373c;border-radius:9999px;box-shadow:none;text-decoration:none;padding:calc(.667em + 2px) calc(1.333em + 2px);font-size:1.125em}.wp-block-file__button{background:#32373c;color:#fff;text-decoration:none} Q. R4.5 The National Halothane Study was... [FREE SOLUTION] | 91Ó°ÊÓ

91Ó°ÊÓ

The National Halothane Study was a major investigation of the safety of anesthetics used in surgery. Records of over 850,000operations performed in 34major hospitals showed the following death rates for four common anesthetics:

There seems to be a clear association between the anesthetic used and the death rate of patients. Anesthetic C appears to be more dangerous.

a. Explain why we call the National Halothane Study an observational study rather than an experiment, even though it compared the results of using different anesthetics in actual surgery.

b. Identify the explanatory and response variables in this study.

c. When the study looked at other variables that are related to a doctor’s choice of anesthetic, it found that Anesthetic C was not causing extra deaths. Explain the concept of confounding in this context and identify a variable that might be confounded with the doctor’s choice of anesthetic.

Short Answer

Expert verified

a. Since records are used, no treatment was deliberately imposed on individuals and thus the study is an observational study.

b. The experimental variable is the anaesthetics and the response variable is the effect of the anaesthetic that is the death rate.

c. The type of the surgery is the variable.

Step by step solution

01

Part (a) Step 1. Explanation

The National Halothane study an observational study rather than an experiment even though it compared the results of using different anaesthetics in actual surgery because An experiment deliberately imposes some treatment on individuals in order to observe their responses. An observational study tries to gather information without disturbing the scene they are observing.

Since records are used, no treatment was deliberately imposed on individuals and thus the study is an observational study.

02

Part (b) Step 1. Explanation

The explanatory variable is the one that is changed in order to see the effect on the response variable.

The experimental variable is the anaesthetics used in the surgery because it is used in the experiment and its result is the response variable is the effect of the anaesthetic that is the death rate controlled by the anaesthetics.

03

Part (c) Step 1. Explanation

Variables are confounded when their effects on a response variable cannot be distinguished. One possible confounding variable is type of surgery. If one anaesthesia is used more often with a type of surgery that has a higher death rate anyway, we wouldn’t know if the death rate was higher because of the anaesthesia type or the surgery type.

Unlock Step-by-Step Solutions & Ace Your Exams!

  • Full Textbook Solutions

    Get detailed explanations and key concepts

  • Unlimited Al creation

    Al flashcards, explanations, exams and more...

  • Ads-free access

    To over 500 millions flashcards

  • Money-back guarantee

    We refund you if you fail your exam.

Over 30 million students worldwide already upgrade their learning with 91Ó°ÊÓ!

One App. One Place for Learning.

All the tools & learning materials you need for study success - in one app.

Get started for free

Most popular questions from this chapter

Parking on campus The director of student life at a university wants to estimate the proportion of undergraduate students who regularly park a car on campus. Describe how to select a stratified random sample of approximately 100students. Explain your choice of strata and why stratified random sampling might be preferred in this context.

To gather information about the validity of a new standardized test for 10th-grade students

in a particular state, a random sample of 15 high schools was selected from the state. The

new test was administered to every 10th-grade student in the selected high schools. What

kind of sample is this?

a. A simple random sample

b. A stratified random sample

c. A cluster sample

d. A systematic random sample

e. A voluntary response sample

Rude surgeons, Is a friendly surgeon a better surgeon? In a study of more than 32,000

surgical patients from 7 different medical centers, researchers classified surgeons by the number of unsolicited complaints that had been recorded about their behavior. The researchers found that surgical complications were significantly more common in patients whose surgeons had received the most complaints, compared with patients whose surgeons had received the fewest complaints. What conclusion can we draw from this study? Explain your reasoning.

Killing weeds A biologist would like to determine which of two brands of weed killer, X or Y, is less likely to harm the plants in a garden at the university. Before spraying near the plants, the biologist decides to conduct an experiment using24individual plants. Which of the following two plans for randomly assigning the treatments should the biologist use? Why?

Plan A: Choose the12healthiest-looking plants. Then flip a coin. If it lands heads, apply Brand X weed killer to these plants and Brand Y weed killer to the remaining12plants. If it lands tails, do the opposite.

Plan B: Choose12of the24plants at random. Apply Brand X weed killer to those12plants and Brand Y weed killer to the remaining12plants.

Pricey pizza- The cost of a meal might affect how customers evaluate and appreciate food. To investigate, researchers worked with an Italian all-you-can-eat buffet to perform an experiment. A total of139 subjects were randomly assigned to pay either\(4 or\)8 for the buffet and then asked to rate the quality of the pizza on a9-point scale. Subjects who paid \(8 rated the pizza11% higher than those who paid only\)4.

Identify the explanatory and response variables, the experimental units, and the treatments.

See all solutions

Recommended explanations on Math Textbooks

View all explanations

What do you think about this solution?

We value your feedback to improve our textbook solutions.

Study anywhere. Anytime. Across all devices.