EXERCISES

1. Reading Articles

Two articles that recently appeared in the media are copied below. Each article discusses the results of a statistical study. For each article, write a paragraph describing the different parts of the study. In particular, answer the following questions:

What were the main questions addressed by the statistical study?
What data were collected to answer the questions?
How did they collect the data?
What variables were measured in the data? Label each variable collected as quantitative or categorical.
What were the conclusions drawn from this statistical study? Do you believe that the conclusions are valid based on the information provided?

ARTICLE 1

Americans' Costly Health Care Not Better

By Jennifer Warner WebMD Medical News

May 5, 2004 -- Americans may pay more for health care than other countries, but they may not necessarily be getting the best medical care.

A new study shows the U.S. health care system ranks near the top on some but not all major health indicators and could take a lesson from the superior performance of other countries on several key areas, such as asthma and transplant surgery survival.

Researchers say the findings show there may be little evidence to back up the mantra often cited by policymakers, "Americans have the best medical care in the world."

"It is well known that the United States spends much more on health care per capita than other countries, and it is commonly assumed that we have the best health care system in the world, " says researcher Peter S. Hussey of the John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, Md., in a news release. "However, the results of our study show that the United States performs better than other countries in only a few areas, while performing worse in others."

"This raises the question of what Americans receive for all of the money devoted to health care," says Hussey.

Comparing Health Care Systems

Researchers say the study, which appears in the May/June issue of Health Affairs, is the first to use a universal set of standards to compare the quality of health care in five countries: Australia, Canada, England, New Zealand, and the U.S.

An international group of researchers collected and examined data on 21 health indicators that reflect the quality of medical care, including:

• 5-year cancer survival rates • Cancer screening rates • Avoidable events, such as suicide, asthma deaths, and smoking prevalence • Vaccination rates • Transplant survival rates

The study showed that no one country consistently scored among the best or worst overall.

For example, the U.S. had the highest breast cancer survival rate, cervical cancer screening rate, and lowest smoking (tied with Canada). But the U.S. performed among the worst in other areas, such as asthma-related deaths and survival after kidney and liver transplants. In fact the U.S. was the only country in which asthma-related deaths were increasing rather than decreasing.

The U.K. scored best in five of the eight avoidable event indicators, including pertussis and hepatitis B, but scored the lowest in five of the nine survival rate indictors and had the lowest cancer survival rate of the five countries studied.

"Each country in our study has areas of care where it can learn from the other countries and areas where it could teach others," says Hussey. "That tells us that there are opportunities for improvement in the quality of health care in all five countries."

SOURCES: Hussey, P.Health Affairs, May/June 2004; vol 23: pp 89-99. News release, John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. © 2004 WebMD Inc. All rights reserved.

ARTICLE 2:

Mass. to track all traffic stops after study finds profiling

The Northeastern University study, released Tuesday, was commissioned four years ago by the Legislature and included 366 departments — from cities and towns and the state police, to university, state transit and Amtrak police agencies. Just 92 got a passing grade.

Public Safety Secretary Edward A. Flynn warned against condemning departments that failed until more information can be gathered. The study caused the state to order 249 departments to collect a year's worth of data on all traffic stops.

"We are not today finding any agency guilty of having engaged in racial profiling," he said. "Data collection is not punishment."

Flynn said requiring agencies to collect more data will provide a clearer picture of racial profiling in Massachusetts. "Every community deserves an explanation from its police department on how it uses its authority," Flynn said.

Northeastern used four statistical tests in analyzing 1.6 million traffic citations issued between April 1, 2001, and June 30, 2003: Ticketing resident minorities disproportionately more than whites; ticketing all minorities disproportionately more than whites; searching minorities more often than whites; and issuing warnings to whites more often than minorities.

According to the study, 15 police departments failed all four tests, 42 failed three tests, 87 failed two tests and 105 failed one. Among those that failed all four were Boston, Springfield and Worcester.

The Executive Office of Public Safety will use $1 million in grant money over the next six months to set up a uniform system for all police departments to report traffic stops, including those that do not result in any citations or written warnings. That information will be gathered over another year, then analyzed again.

Jack Collins, general counsel for the Massachusetts Chiefs of Police Association, said the added paperwork is a "witch hunt" and unnecessary.

Bishop Filipe Teixeira, a Catholic bishop from Brockton, said he's heard complaints in his community about minorities being targeted.

"We do have bad apples in the police departments," Teixeira said. "We have enough data. Let's get into action."

Copyright 2004 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

2. Reading Articles

In a local or national newspaper, find three articles that describe conclusions from a statistical study. Summarize the information in each article by answering the questions given in Exercise

3. Graphical Displays in the Media

Four graphical displays from USA Today are shown below. For each display, answer the following questions:

What is the source of the information? (That is, where did the information come from?)
How is the information portrayed in the graphical display?
What is the basic message communicated in the graphic?
Is the graphical display an accurate representation of the data? In particular, does the graphical display follow the area principle, where the areas of the bars or shape are proportional to the data values?