Identifying variables

Bony Wiem Lestari Epidemiology and Biostatistics Department

Why it is important to assess our variables of interest?

Research design issue Measurement issue Statistical testing

Research Design
Independent variable/ risk factor(s)/ predictor(s)/ exposure(s) Dependent variable/ disease(s)/ outcome(s) Choosing appropriate research design

Epidemiologic Study Design The plan of an empirical investigation to assess an E D relationship.

Exposure Alcohol consumption Outcome Breast Cancer E. Coli

Raw hamburger
Lung Cancer Smoking

Type of Epidemiologic Studies

The investigator through randomization allocates subjects to different categories of exposure.
Investigator observes the exposure and outcome status of each

Observational Studies
Descriptive Studies Analytic Studies

Observational Studies
Descriptive Studies
To organize and summarize data according to time, place, and person. Why?
Describe natural history of disease Extent of public health problem Identify populations at greatest risk Allocation of health care resources Suggest hypothesis about causation

Observational Studies
Analytic Studies
Used to quantify the association between an exposure (E) and a health outcome (D), and to test hypotheses about causal relationships.
Provides a control group (baseline) Test hypotheses about determinants Causation

Measurement issue
How to operationalise the way a measurement is carried out? When should measurements be taken? How many measurements should be taken on each variable and how should several measurements be combined?

Standardized information Cost and time efficient

Measurement issue
Variables Definition: something that is likely to vary; something that can be changed, such as a characteristic or value. In clinical research: a quantity whose value may vary from patient to patient

Measurement issue
Independent variable: the variable that is controlled and manipulated by the experimenter to see how it affects the dependent variable. Dependent variable: the variable that is measured by the experimenter; what is actually being measured in the experiment? e.g: impact of sleep deprivation on test performance

Measurement issue
Confounding variable: the variable that may have an impact on the relationship between the independent and dependent variables e.g: age, gender and education level

Operationally Defining a Variable

Before conducting a study, it is essential to create firm operational definitions for both the independent variable and dependent variable. An operational definition describes how the variables are measured and defined within the study.

Operationally Defining a Variable

e.g: impact of sleep deprivation on test performance sleep deprivation = IV test performance = DV (scores) Hypothesis: students who are sleep deprived will score significantly lower on a test

Operationally Defining a Variable

sleep deprivation refers to those participants who have had less than five hours of sleep the night before the test.

test performance : a students score on a chapter exam

Statistical testing
Choice of methods is largely determined by the type and character of variables Qualitative : variable for which the numerical value is not meaningful, also called categorical variable. e.g: gender, race, social status. Quantitative: the value of variable should be interpreted as a number, also called numerical variable. e.g: counts, age, blood pressure

Types of variables
CATEGORICAL (or qualitative) 1. Nominal: no natural ordering of categories
E.g: sex, smoker/non-smoker (dichotomous) blood group, married/single/divorced/widowed (polytomous)

2. Ordinal: natural ordering

E.g: result of treatment (worsened/no change/improved) level of education: primary/secondary/high stage of breast cancer: I, II, III, IV

Types of variables
NUMERICAL (or quantitative) 1.Discrete: a variable which can take on only a countable number of values
e.g: no. of persons in a household, no. of white blood cells in blood sample

2. Continuous: a variable that can get any value along some line interval
e.g: height, age, blood pressure, BMI

Some well known statistical tests

Normal Distribution Dichotomous Samples distrib. free data

2 T-test Mann-Whitney -square >2 ANOVA Kruskal-Wallis -square >2 ordered Linear Spearmans rho Logistic regres. regression 1 (paired) Paired t-test Wilcoxon (signed rank) McNemar >=2 (survi- AFT models Kaplan-Meier curves/ val data) Logrank-tests/Cox-regres. Analysis of count data: Poisson regression

Thank you