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Trident University International

Ph.D. B.A. Program Class RES600:
Introductory to Data Analysis

Professor: Dr. Truel
Student: Anh Tran
E-mail: Anh.NTran@my.trident.edu
Phone: 714-904-6209


Subject

Date

From
SLP #5 for Module 5: Describing data
statistically: Association, regression, and
correlation
16-Dec-2013

A. Tran




Reference:

1. Barakat S, Chard M, Jacoby T, Lume W.,The Composite Approach: Research Design
in the Context of War and Armed Conflict., Third World Quarterly. 2002;23:9911003.
2. Burnham G, Lafta R, Doocy S, Roberts L. Mortality after the 2003 Invasion of Iraq: A
Cross-Sectional Cluster Sample Survey., The Lancet. 2006;368:14211428. [PubMed]
3. Koch R. Die aetiologie der Tuberculose. Mitteilungen aus dem Kaiserlichen
Gesundheitsamte 1884; 2:1.
4. Rothman, Kenneth J., Editor, Casual Inference, Epidemiology Resources Inc., Fourth
Printing, 1988, pg. 207.





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1.Suppose Abraham Lincoln answered a survey questionnaire and indicated that he had not
received a grade school diploma. The researcher found that Abraham Lincolns educational score
did not correlate highly with the expected variable. What is wrong?
The expected value of the educational score is the mean of the probability distribution of the
educational score of the population. If Lincolns education score is much higher or much lower than
the expected value (i.e., did not correlate highly with the expected variable), it means that Lincoln
has a high chance (>50%) to have a higher education or lower education than the average.
If Lincolns educational score is lower than the average, then there is a good correlation
between his educational score and the fact that he had not received a grade school diploma.
Otherwise, it will be a weak correlation.
2.An international marketer has said, When political instability increases, the price of quality
increases. Think about the potential issues with measurements and data collection. Is this a
testable hypothesis?
The political instability in a society can pose a substantial obstacle for a researcher to collect
the survey data. The problem is due to the poor or biased samples caused by either high levels of
non-responses or low representation of the population. Barakat et al. [1] stated that a scientific
sampling is usually not possible in the war conflict or political instability situations and that using
the structured interviews might be an inappropriate ways to collecting information. Burnham et al
[2] gave an example of the efforts to estimate the number of violent deaths during the US led
invasion of Iraq. The number varies from around 43,000 (Iraq Body Count 2011) to 654,965 and
shows how unreliable survey data is.
Because the poor quality of the collected data during a political instability, the hypothesis of
the correlation between the political instability and the price of quality is not testable.
3. A few years ago, the Food and Drug Administration issued a strong warning against Procter &
Gambles Rely tampon. The study of toxic shock syndrome (TSS) indicated that of the 42 TSS
patients, 71 percent of the women had used Rely tampons. What are the causal implications
concerning Rely and TSS?
The study of TSS indicated a strong correlation between the TSS and the women that used
the Rely tampons. The correlation showed that more than 71% of the women used the Rely tampons
also had the TSS. However, its not adequate and sufficient to establish the cause and effect
between the TSS and the Rely tampons. Its a mistake to conclude that the TSS was caused by the
Rely tampons alone. It could be that an another group of influence factors caused this relationship
or the existence of this relationship occurred out of a chance or accidental event. As Kock [3] said a
century ago Its not sufficient to establish only the concomitant occurrence of the disease and
parasite, but the parasite must be shown to be the real cause.



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However, even though the solid cause and effect relationship between the TSS and the Rely
tampons was not established scientifically, the decision to advise women not to use the Rely
tampons was an acceptable action. To illustrate this point, the theory that oral intercourse can cause
AIDS is not well tested, but homosexual men have been advised to refrain from the practice for this
reason [4].
4.What are the assumptions for using linear regression? A researcher has a series of Likert-scaled
items and a measure of frequency of absenteeism. He uses each of the Likert-scaled items in a
separate bivariate correlation with absenteeism without testing for the assumptions of linear
relationships. Is this ethical?
There are four main assumptions which justify the use of linear regression models for
purposes of prediction:
(i) linearity of the relationship between dependent and independent variables
(ii) independence of the errors (no serial correlation)
(iii) homoscedasticity (constant variance) of the errors
(iv) normality of the error distribution.
If any of these assumptions is violated, then the predictions based on this regression model
may be inefficient or seriously misleading.
Likert-scaled items are usually an ordinal type, which shows a rank order but not the relative
degree of difference between them. Treating ordinal data as interval (or even ratio) data without
examining the values of the dataset and the objectives of the analysis can both mislead and
misrepresent the findings of a survey.
Therefore, using each of the Likert-scaled items in a separate bivariate correlation with
absenteeism without testing for the assumptions of linear relationships is not only unethical but also
misled.