Question 1
Anonymous
Discussion – Week 2
Displaying Data
Visual displays of data provide you and anyone else with a graphical display of what is often a complex array of quantitative data. A key strength of visualization is the ability to quickly enlighten you with key data. Rather than solely relying on your audience to interpret numerical values and statistics explained in a narrative, a visual display can easily illustrate descriptions, relationships, and trends. Although the focus is on simplicity, the researcher has an obligation to present these graphical displays in a clear and meaningful way.
For this Discussion, you will explore ways to appropriately display data.
To prepare for this Discussion:
- Review the Learning Resources for this week related to frequency distributions and graphic displays of data.
- Using the SPSS software, open the General Social Survey dataset found in this week’s Learning Resources.
- Next, create a figure or table from a few selected variables within the dataset.
- Finally, think about what is good about how the data are displayed in the figure or table you created and what is not so good.
- Question No 2
- Discussion – Week
- Supply and Demand in Public HealthYou may or may not be familiar with the principles of supply and demand. These are common economic concepts which play an important role in public health. Supply refers to the law that when more goods and services are offered, prices also increase. Conversely, as prices decrease so does production of those goods and services. Demand is the law stating that more goods and services are purchased when the price decreases and less when the price increases.For example: Physicians draw on their professional expertise to determine what a particular patient needs related to their health. Medical insurance companies generally operate under the terms of demand. Supply comes into play when the medical insurance companies use the concept to make decisions for allocating medical goods and services among groups of patients. Elasticity is another important principle of the law of demand to consider when you are examining demand for a particular good or service. Price elasticity of demand measures how much the quantity demanded of a particular good or service will change as price changes.Supply curves in public health, as in other markets, are graphs that show the total quantity of a good or service that sellers are willing to sell at each price. Yet, supply in public health is subject to many influences that are not as evident in other kinds of markets.As a public health professional, it is important to consider the intricacies of these concepts and how they affect public health.For this Discussion, review the media, “Supply Health Care Services,” and Learning Resources. Select an example of the principles of supply and demand for public health goods and services. Consider the effects of supply and demand on public health that might influence price elasticity. Next, think about how price elasticity might influence the quantity of goods and services demanded in public health.
ExampleS FOR QUESTION 1
Abdul Rahman Shahab
RE: Discussion – Week 2 – Abdul’s Post
Displaying Data
One of the functions and purposes of statistics is to communicate information to the target audience (Frankfort-Nachmias & Leon-Guerrero, 2018). Clarity and completeness are among the primary considerations in displaying data to ensure that the information in the data is presented clearly for the target audience and that the data shows the whole picture. To illustrate the information in a clear and scholarly way, the visualization should display the data in a scientifically recommended format (American Psychological Association, 2019).
For nominal and ordinal data, one of the recommended graphs is the Pie chart which visually shows the size (and proportion) of the different categories in the data. For example, the graph shown in Figure 1 is for respondents’ political party affiliation in the General Social Survey dataset provided in the class. The figure shows the sizes of the eight categories in comparison to each other. Thus, the visualization is suited to display the big picture of the composition of respondents regarding political party affiliation. However, there are few issues in the graph from a clarity point of view. First, the exact percentage of each category is not evident from the graph unless data labels are shown for the categories, which will affect the clarity of the figure from a scholarly point of view. The other issue is with the use of colors. There are eight categories, and some colors may not be distinguished from one another, and people who are dependent on-screen readers could find it hard to interpret colors for this many categories.
Figure 1
Political Affiliation of Respondents in the General Social Survey Dataset
Note: In the legend, the label “Not Str Democrat” is the short form of “Not very strong Democrat”; the label “Ind, Near Dem” for “Independent, close to Democrat”; the label “Ind, Near Rep” for “Independent, close to Republican”; and the label “Not Str Republican” for “Not very strong Republican”.
The alternative graph for the same variable is the Bar chart, which can portray clear picture and complete information about respondents’ political party affiliation. The Bar graph shown in Figure 2 illustrates clear percentage values for each category. The comparison between categories can also be made easily from the height of the bars which was not possible with the Pie graph. Further, the need for different colors is also eliminated in the Bar graph as the category labels are shown under the columns.
Figure 2
Bar Graph for Political Party Affiliation
Note: The label “Not Str Democrat” is the short form of “Not very strong Democrat”; the label “Ind, Near Dem” for “Independent, close to Democrat”; the label “Ind, Near Rep” for “Independent, close to Republican”; and the label “Not Str Republican” for “Not very strong Republican”.
References
American Psychological Association (Ed.). (2019). Publication manual of the American psychological association (Seventh edition). American Psychological Association.
Frankfort-Nachmias, C., & Leon-Guerrero, A. (2018). Social statistics for a diverse society (Eighth edition). SAGE.
Example 2 for week 1
Week 2 – Discussion Post
June 9, 2021
Kristin Reed-Anderson
Ph.D, Program – Public Health
Walden University
RSCH 8210: Quantitative Reasoning and Analysis
Instructor Dr. Tawfik
Visual Display of Data
Displaying Data
Why Display the Dataset in the Selected Figure or Table
A histogram can be used to show the differences in the percentages or frequencies between categories of an ordinal or interval-ratio variable (Frankfort-Nachmias et al., 2021). A histogram looks similar to a bar graph, however unlike the bar graph, the bars in a histogram are adjacent and are in an arranged in a meaningful order. Histograms are constructed using intervals along the horizontal (X) axis, and the frequencies along the vertical (Y) axis. The area of each bar represents the number of cases that fall into the given interval (Frankfort-Nachmias et al., 2021). A multivariate histogram can be used to display stacked bars of one variable’s distribution in relation to the categories of another variable (Wagner, 2020).
In the case of the General Social Survey dataset, the mean of the variable AGE is 49.0 years. Using the stacked histogram figure allows one to not only visualize the distribution and frequency of the age of the survey’s participants, but also to identify the percentage of the respondent’s race. In this dataset, it is important to note that the entire data set of 604 cases, with 457 cases, White respondents represent 75% of the entire surveyed population and, at age 74 and above, there is no data or representation from races other than Whites, and Blacks. Understanding how many cases are within those certain categories can help public health professionals to identify how programs, trends, disease, and other social determinants of health can impact populations differently. Also, researchers should take care in organizing and summarizing data in an organized systematic fashion as results aim to accurately represent those of the entire population (Frankfort-Nachmias et al., 2021).
References
Frankfort-Nachmias, C., Leon-Guerrero, A., & Davis, G. (2021). Social statistics for a diverse society (9th ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
Wagner, W. E. (2020). Using IBM® SPSS® statistics for research methods and social science statistics (6th ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
0 comments