Exercises 6, 8, and 9

Exercise 6 - Understanding Frequencies and Percentages

Name: _______________________________    

1. What are the frequency and percentage of the COPD patients in the severe airflow limitation
group who are employed in the Eckerblad et al. (2014) study?

2. What percentage of the total sample is retired? What percentage of the total sample is on sick
leave?

3. What is the total sample size of this study? What frequency and percentage of the total sample
were still employed? Show your calculations and round your answer to the nearest whole percent.

4. What is the total percentage of the sample with a smoking history—either still smoking or former smokers? Is the smoking history for study participants clinically important? Provide a rationale for your answer.

5. What are pack years of smoking? Is there a significant difference between the moderate and severe airflow limitation groups regarding pack years of smoking? Provide a rationale for your answer.

6. What were the four most common psychological symptoms reported by this sample of patients
with COPD? What percentage of these subjects experienced these symptoms? Was there a significant difference between the moderate and severe airflow limitation groups for 
psychological symptoms?

7. What frequency and percentage of the total sample used short-acting β2 -agonists? Show your
calculations and round to the nearest whole percent.

8. Is there a significant difference between the moderate and severe airflow limitation groups
regarding the use of short-acting β 2 -agonists? Provide a rationale for your answer.

9. Was the percentage of COPD patients with moderate and severe airflow limitation using short acting β 2 -agonists what you expected? Provide a rationale with documentation for your answer.

10. Are these findings ready for use in practice? Provide a rationale for your answer.

Exercise 8 – Measures of Central Tendency: Mean, Median, and Mode
1. The number of nursing students enrolled in a particular nursing program between the years of
2010 and 2016, respectively, were 563, 593, 606, 520, 563, 610, and 577. Determine the mean
( X ), median ( MD ), and mode of the number of the nursing students enrolled in this program.
Show your calculations.2. What is the mode for the variable inpatient complications in Table 2 of the Winkler et al. (2014) study? What percentage of the study participants had this complication?

3. Does the distribution of inpatient complications have a single mode, or is this distribution
bimodal or multimodal? Provide a rationale for your answer.

4. As reported in Table 1 , what are the three most common cardiovascular medical history events in this study, and why is it clinically important to know the frequency of these events?

5. What are the mean and median lengths of stay (LOS) for the study participants?

6. Are the mean and median for LOS similar or different? What might this indicate about the
distribution of the sample? Provide a rationale for your answer.

7. Examine the study results and determine the mode for arrhythmias experienced by the participants.  What was the second most common arrhythmia in this sample?

8. Was the most common arrhythmia in Question 7 related to LOS? Was this result statistically significant? Provide a rationale for your answer.

 9. What study variables were independently predictive of the 50 premature ventricular contractions (PVCs) per hour in this study?

10. In Table 1 , what race is the mode for this sample? Should these study findings be generalized to American Indians with ACS? Provide a rationale for your answer.

Exercise 9 – Measures of Dispersion: Range and Standard Deviation
1. What were the name and type of measurement method used to measure Caring Practices in the
Roch, Dubois, and Clarke (2014) study?

2. The data collected with the scale identified in Questions 1 were at what level of measurement?
Provide a rationale for your answer.

3. What were the subscales included in the CNPISS used to measure RNs ’ perceptions of their
Caring Practices? Do these subscales seem relevant? Document your answer.

4. Which subscale for Caring Practices had the lowest mean? What does this result indicate?

5. What were the dispersion results for the Relational Care subscale of the Caring Practices in
Table 2 ? What do these results indicate?

6. Which subscale of Caring Practices has the lowest dispersion or variation of scores? Provide a
rationale for your answer.

7. Which subscale of Caring Practices had the highest mean? What do these results indicate?

8. Compare the Overall rating for Organizational Climate with the Overall rating of Caring
Practices. What do these results indicate?

9. The response rate for the survey in this study was 45%. Is this a study strength or limitation?
Provide a rationale for your answer.

10. What conclusions did the researchers make regarding the caring practices of the nurses in this
study? How might these results affect your practice?