Health Research Paper Example

Part I: Ephedra

Q1. What type of study will you pursue? (Name)

Cohort Study.

Q2. In every experiment, a scientist must have a hypothesis. Formulate null and alternate hypothesis for your study.

1.Null hypothesis

Ephedra does not help athletes have a superior advantage over their competitors.

2.Alternate hypothesis

Ephedra helps athletes help athletes have a superior advantage over their competitors.

Q3. What method will you use to test your hypothesis? Explain briefly.

In testing the hypothesis, firstly the hypothesis was stated, an analysis plan formulated, a sample data that matched to the analysis plan was investigated and finally accepting or rejection of the hypothesis. With an already stated supposition, the following process will be used to test the same (Tartakovsky, Nikiforov& Basseville, 2014).

In formulating an analysis plan, the process for collecting sample data to be used in acceptance or rejection of the hypothesis will be prepared. Significance level is chosen as a figure between 0 and 1(Tartakovsky et al, 2014).

Secondly, a sample of data will be analyzed in conformance with the analysis plan. Here either standard error or standard deviation of the statistics will be necessary to be computed.

Finally, interpretation of the results will follow. The guiding basis here is that if the sample findings are improbable, the null hypothesis will be rejected. This step involves comparing the P-value to the significance level. The null hypothesis is rejected when the P-value is lower than the significance level (Tartakovsky et al, 2014).

Q4. What are the ethical issues that a researcher must face in an experiment such as this?

In this kind of research, a researcher is bound to face numerous ethical issue which must be taken care of to ensure the credibility of the findings. Among them are protecting the discretion and privacy of the athletes through keeping their details secure, obtaining informed consensus from the athlete who will participate in the experiment (Elger 2016).

The athlete should participate in the experiment voluntarily without coercion. Public trust must be maintained through providing credible and accurate information concerning the experiment. Additionally, the researcher may be called upon to confront unbecoming behavior from the participants of the experiment. Lastly, the researcher may be required to keep off from having partiality and conflict of interest (Elger 2016).

Q5. How can these issues be resolved?

Ethical issues that may arise in this investigation may be resolved by following a ten-step procedure. Firstly, the researcher should identify the ethical problem associated with testing the effects of ephedra on the performance of the athletes. Secondly, collecting data concerning the ethical issue identified (Oleske 2014). The next step involves ascertaining whether the ethical issue is regulatory or procedural issue. After determining the nature of the issue, one should compare the problem to a specific rule in ASHA's code of ethics. After the comparison, the next step is identifying the elements in control which is performed simultaneously with finding out the elements that are in your control. Next, the researcher finds the resources at their disposal to solve the ethical challenge. Following this step is, preparing a list of possible actions and their consequences either positive or negative. Armed with a list of probable actions and their consequences, one then prepares a detailed action plan specifying how to implement the findings. And lastly, take action and examine your plan as you proceed (Oleske 2014). With the results, you can make the next steps.

Q6. How would you measure the outcome of your experiment?

To measure the outcome of the experiment, the primary action would be to ascertain the effect of Ephedra on athletes. The objective of this is to find out the chemical effects of the substance in the bodies of athletes. Either the performance of the athlete improves after using the drug, or it remains constant.

Part II: Hookah Smoking and Lung Cancer

Q1. Do you agree or disagree with the investigator? Explain briefly.

The investigator is correct in noting that there is a possibility of overestimating the relationship between Hookah smoking and small cell lung cancer (Bhopal 2016). In essence, the hospital specializes mainly in the treatment of small cell lung cancer, and many of its patients come from all over the United States. It is thus expected that the ratio of patients with small cell lung cancer in the hospital will be higher than that of those that are hospitalized for other ailments (Bhopal 2016). The results from that study may give a negative impression of the prevalent of the disease.

Q2. What type of bias may be present? Please provide your rationale.

The type of bias in this investigation is selection bias as there is a systematic difference between those with small cell lung cancer and the control group. Consequently, there will be problems with the generalizability of the investigation results.

References

Bhopal, R. S. (2016). Concepts of epidemiology: integrating the ideas, theories, principles, and methods of epidemiology. Oxford University Press.

Elger, B. (2016). Ethical issues of human genetic databases: a challenge to classical health research ethics?. Routledge.

Oleske, D. M. (2014). Epidemiology and the delivery of health care services. Springer.

Tartakovsky, A., Nikiforov, I., & Basseville, M. (2014). Sequential analysis: Hypothesis testing and changepoint detection. CRC Press.