Alzheimer\'s disease results in a loss of cognitive ability beyond what is expec

Question

Alzheimer's disease results in a loss of cognitive ability beyond what is expected with typical aging. A local newspaper published an article with the following headline. Study Finds Strong Association Between Smoking and Alzheimer's The article reported that a study tracked the medical histories of 21, 123 men and women for 23 years. The article stated that, for those who smoked at least two packs of cigarettes a day, the risk of developing Alzheimer's disease was 2.57 times the risk for those who did not smoke. (a) Identify the explanatory and response variables in the study. Explanatory variable: Response variable: (b) Is the study described in the article an observational study or an experiment? Explain. (c) Exercise status (regular weekly exercise versus no regular weekly exercise) was mentioned in the article as possible confounding variable. Explain how exercise status could be a confounding variable in the study.

Explanation / Answer

Solution:

a) Explanatory variable: smoking at least two packs of cigarettes a day.
Response variable : developing alzheimer's disease.

b) There are no treatments men and women are simply being observed and nothing if they smoke at packs per a day or not. No one is being force to do snything.

c) Men and women not seperated into groups based upon if they excercise or not, so the overall conclusion could be distorted if excercise plays a role in developing preventing Alzheimers. Doing a stratified sample based upon excercise would have been beneficial to reduce this confounding variable.

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