Introduction
The mean age of the sample data is 56.5 years. This implies that the arithmetic mean (average) across all the age-related observations in the sample data provided in the book is 56.5 years. The mean age of 56.5 years shows that the age values of the 10 patients are not skewed towards one end given that the minimum age is 35 years and the maximum age is 86 years.
Question 2: Percentage of Patients who Never Used Tobacco
From the analysis, it is clear that only 2 (20%) of the patients in the provided sample data never used tobacco. It is important to note that the value “N” represents those who never used tobacco in the sample data, while “F” denotes former use of tobacco and “C” stands for current use of tobacco by the patients.
Question 3: Standard Deviation for Age
The standard deviation for age is 19.25992. Since the standard deviation denotes a summary measure of the differences of each observation from the mean value, the large standard deviation demonstrated in the table can only imply that the age values in the provided data set are farther away from the mean age of 56.5 years, on average (Rumsey, 2016).
Question 4: Outliers among the Values of Age
An outlier, according to Grove and Cipher (2017), “is a value in a sample data set that is unusually low or unusually high in the context of the rest of the sample data” (p. 303). As shown from the analysis, the lowest age value in the dataset is 35 years and the highest is 86 years. However, all the other age values are evenly distributed between the lowest age value and the highest age value, meaning that there are no outliers or extreme values among the values of age. Additionally, there are no data points falling away as the extremes in the histogram (Knapp, 2017), meaning that the data set has no outliers among the values of age. Lastly, the SPSS Boxplot does not identify any outliers (often displayed as little circles with the ID number of the patient attached) (Rumsey, 2016).
Question 5: Range of Age Values
The range of age values is 51.00 years. Since the range denotes a measure of the spread of a particular variable (Grove & Cipher, 2017), the range value of 51 years is equal to the difference between the largest age value (86 years) and the smallest age value (35 years).
Question 6: Infliximab
From the analysis, it is clear that 6 (60%) of the patients in the sample data set had been taking Infliximab.
Question 7: Rheumatoid Arthritis
Half of the patients (50.0%) had a primary diagnosis for rheumatoid arthritis as the value “5” represents rheumatoid arthritis. It is important to note that the value of “5” was used to symbolize rheumatoid arthritis when entering data into the SPSS program.
Question 8: Irritable Bowel Syndrome
As demonstrated in the SPSS output table below, 3 (30%) of the patients had a primary diagnosis for irritable bowel syndrome as the value “3” represents irritable bowel syndrome. It is important to note that the value of “3” was used to symbolize irritable bowel syndrome when entering data into the SPSS program.
Question 9: Confidence Interval for Age
The 95% confidence interval for age is 42.7223 (lower bound) and 70.2777 (upper bound). This means that the lower (95%) confidence limit for the mean age is 42.7223 years, while the upper (95%) confidence limit for the mean age is 70.2777 years. Overall, it should be noted that “statisticians use a confidence interval to describe the amount of uncertainty associated with a sample estimate of a population parameter” (Knapp, 2017, p. 56).
Question 10: Psoriatic Arthritis
From the analysis, it is clear that only 1 (10.0%) of the patients had a primary diagnosis for psoriatic arthritis. The value “4” represents psoriatic arthritis. It is important to note that the value of “4” was used to symbolize psoriatic arthritis when entering data into the SPSS program.
References
Grove, S.K., & Cipher, D.J. (2017). Statistics for nursing research: A workbook for evidence-based practice (2nd ed.). St. Louis, MI: Elsevier.
Knapp, H. (2017). Practical statistics for nursing using SPSS. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publishing.
Rumsey, D.J. (2016). Statistics for dummies (2nd ed.). New York, NY: For Dummies Publishing.