Suppose you wanted to compare the depression level among those who mediate for 1

Question

Suppose you wanted to compare the depression level among those who mediate for 15 minutes a day and those who exercise for 30 minutes a day. You enroll into your study 80 patients who have been diagnosed with depression, and randomly assign 42 people to the meditation group, and 38 people to the exercise group. The study period is one month. You measure the Beck depression score for each of the 80 patients at the start of the study, and again measure their Beck depression score at the end of the study.

a. You want to compare the mean change from baseline in Beck score in the meditation and exercise groups. Which test would you use? (1pt)

b. Using the Beck scores recorded at baseline and post-treatment, you want to see if there has been a significant reduction in depression among just the patients in the meditation group. Which test would you use? (1 pt)

c. You make a note of whether or not a patient felt better at the end of the study with respect to their depression, and want to compare the proportion of patients who feel better in each of the groups (meditation vs. exercise). Which test would you use? (1pt)

d. Which of the following design features were included in this study? List all of the following, and circle the ones that apply: (1pt)

e. Control group Blinding Balance Randomization

f. Suppose you expect gender to be a possible confounding variable in this study. Explain how you can block by gender. (1pt)

Explanation / Answer

a) 2-sample t test (beck scores is comapred aamong meditation and exercise group).

b) Paired t test (Paired data is collected (pre and post Beck scores of 1 group-mediatation)

c) 2-proportion z test. (Proportion of patients feeling better in each group is compared)

d) Balance randomization

f) Assign patients with depression into two blocks-male and female and then randomly put them into treatments-meditation and exrcise.

Related Questions

Navigate

• Browse (All)
• Browse S
• Subjects

Integrity-first tutoring: explanations and feedback only — we do not complete graded work. Learn more.