Confidence Intervals and Hypothesis Tests

Confidence Intervals and Hypothesis Tests essay assignment

Confidence Intervals and Hypothesis Tests essay assignment

You have likely encountered confidence intervals and hypothesis tests in your previous statistics courses. How are confidence intervals and hypothesis tests related to healthcare administration practice?

 

As a healthcare administration leader, you will likely want to test whether certain improvement initiatives are working more effectively than others. Additionally, you might want to test whether a certain improvement initiative is worth investing in given positive health outcomes and cost of resources. Hypothesis tests are valuable tools that may assist the healthcare administration leader in executing such decision making.

Get solution to your nursing paper : Confidence Intervals and Hypothesis Tests

1. This week, you apply confidence intervals and hypothesis tests for healthcare administration problems. You also reflect on the types of information healthcare administration leaders might derive from hypothesis testing.

 

Learning Objectives

Students will:

 

· Evaluate confidence intervals

· Execute hypothesis testing with confidence intervals

Photo Credit: Laureate Education

 

Learning Resources

Note: To access this week’s required library resources, please click on the link to the Course Readings List, found in the Course Materials section of your Syllabus.

 

Required Readings

 

Albright, S. C., & Winston, W. L. (2017). Business analytics: Data analysis and decision making (6th ed.). Stamford, CT: Cengage Learning.

 

Chapter 8, “Confidence Interval Estimation”

Chapter 9, “Hypothesis Testing”

Fulton, L. V., Ivanitskaya, L. V., Bastian, N. D., Erofeev, D. A., & Mendez, F. A. (2013). Frequent deadlines: Evaluating the effect of learner control on healthcare executives’ performance in online learning. Learning and Instruction, 23, 24–32.

 

Required Media

 

The Doctoral Journey. (2013). SPSS tutorial: One-way ANOVA. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYn5Jv7Gh4s

 

The Doctoral Journey. (2013). SPSS tutorial: Independent t test. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0TMKRkpuNU

 

The Doctoral Journey. (2013). SPSS tutorial: Paired sample t test. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVZi-62uTTg.

 

Discussion Part (2 pages)

 

Confidence Intervals in Healthcare Administration

 

Healthcare administration leaders are asked to make evidence-based decisions on a daily basis. Sometimes, these decisions involve high levels of uncertainty, as you have examined previously. Other times, there are data upon which evidence-based analysis might be conducted.

 

1. This week, you will be asked to think of scenarios where building and interpreting confidence intervals (CIs) would be useful for healthcare administration leaders to conduct a two-sided hypothesis test using fictitious data.

 

For example, Ralph is a healthcare administration leader who is interested in evaluating whether the mean patient satisfaction scores for his hospital are significantly different from 87 at the .05 level. He gathers a sample of 100 observations and finds that the sample mean is 83 and the standard deviation is 5. Using a t-distribution, he generates a two-sided confidence interval (CI) of 83 +/- 1.984217 *5/sqrt(100). The 95% CI is then (82.007, 83.992). If repeated intervals were conducted identically, 95% should contain the population mean. The two-sided hypothesis test can be formulated and tested just with this interval. Ho: Mu = 87, Ha: Mu<>87. Alpha = .05. If he assumes normality and that population standard deviation is unknown, he selects the t-distribution. After constructing a 95% CI, he notes that 87 is not in the interval, so he can reject the null hypothesis that the mean satisfaction rates are 87. In fact, he has an evidence-based analysis to suggest that the mean satisfaction rates are not equal to (less than) 87.

 

2. For this Discussion, review the resources for this week, and consider how a CI might be used to support hypothesis testing in a healthcare scenario.

 

By Day 3

3. Post a description of a healthcare scenario where a CI might be used, and then complete a fictitious two-sided hypothesis test using a CI and fictitious data.

 

By Day 5

Continue the Discussion and respond to your colleagues in one or more of the following ways:

 

· Ask a probing question, substantiated with additional background information, evidence, or research.

· Share an insight from having read your colleagues’ postings, synthesizing the information to provide new perspectives.

· Offer and support an alternative perspective, using readings from the classroom or from your own research in the Walden Library.

· Validate an idea with your own experience and additional research.

· Make a suggestion based on additional evidence drawn from readings or after synthesizing multiple postings.

· Expand on your colleagues’ postings by providing additional insights or contrasting perspectives based on readings and evidence.