This is answer to question 1-a from the previous year.

Problem 1.

For each of the following scenarios, discuss the main issue(s) with
respect to sampling bias, and the implications of such bias for
accurately understanding the population feature(s) of interest.
a) Researchers are interested in understanding the association between
stock market declines and increase in heart attack rates in the
population of American adults. The study sample consists of 11,590
patients with poor heart health who were scheduled to undergo heart
examinations at Duke University Medical Center in North Carolina.
Within this group of individuals, researchers observed that the monthly
rate of heart attacks increased during a time period when monthly
opening values of the NASDAQ were decreasing.

{Since the study focuses on individuals with pre-existing heart conditions from the
North Carolina area, the results cannot be reasonably generalized to all American
adults. For example, peoples with pre-existing heart conditions may be particularly
sensitive to stress relative to a person without a heart condition, so perhaps there would
not be a similarly strong correlation observed if this study were repeated on people
without heart conditions.
Additionally, people with pre-existing heart conditions also tend to be older, so
the sample likely does not contain many younger adults; it may be the case that the
association between stock market declines and increase in AMI rates is differs by
age. At best, this study could be generalized to adults with pre-existing heart.