4-2 Short Paper: Confidence Intervals

Robin McFadden

IHP 340

SNHU

January 29, 2023

Part I

1. Describe the population that this sample was selected from.

Adolescents with asthma between the ages of 11 and 17 who receive treatment at the

clinics involved in this study from rural and suburban areas of North Carolina made up

the population of this sample. Additionally, the 46 healthcare professionals from the 4

clinics who consented to take part in the study.

2. Write out the research question that can be answered by the confidence interval

(CI) in (a). What percentage of teenagers smoke, and is this number higher than that of

the control group?

3. Describe in words the population parameter that is being estimated by the

confidence interval in (a). The 44% of adolescents in the intervention group who visited

their doctors and discussed smoking during the visit—whether it was brought up by the

adolescent or the provider—are the demographic parameter being estimated.

4. What is the margin of error for the confidence interval in (a)? 0.51-0.37=0.14/2=

Margin of Error 0.07

5. Interpret the CI in (a) using your own words. What answer is it giving us in regard

to the research question? The 95 % confidence interval demonstrates that the

4-2 Short Paper: Confidence Intervals

population parameter has a modest margin of error of .07 and standard error of .035 and

falls inside that interval. Between 37 and 51% of asthmatic teenagers will talk to their

doctor about tobacco use after receiving treatment. Therefore, the percentage of

adolescents who discuss tobacco use with their doctor is not exactly 44%, indicating that

the answer to my study question is no. It is difficult to determine whether watching the

video and answering a questionnaire about your asthma had any influence on your

decision to discuss smoking tobacco or not from this one study because less than half of

the physician visits mentioned doing so when you have asthma. To obtain a more reliable

outcome, further sample studies with larger sample sizes would need to be conducted.

Part II

1. Write out the research question that can be answered by the confidence interval in

(c). Are teenagers who receive intervention more likely than those who don't to talk to

their doctors about using tobacco?

2. Describe in words the population parameter that is being estimated by the

confidence interval in (c). The population parameter measures whether or not seeing a

film and answering a questionnaire had an impact on the result among the adolescents

who took part in this study from the intervention group and the control group, who talked

to their doctor about smoking during their appointments.

3. What is the margin of error for the confidence interval in (c). The margin of error is

CI: (0.02, 0.22) = 0.1.

4. Interpret the confidence interval in (c) using your own words. What answer is it

giving us in regard to the research question? The population parameter for the
4-2 Short Paper: Confidence Intervals

difference between the two groups, as indicated by the 95% confidence interval, was

12% and fell between the range of 2 and 22%. This confidence interval analysis

demonstrates that participation in the intervention, viewing the film, and answering the

questionnaire influenced how often the adolescent's healthcare practitioner brought up

smoking during visits.