The objective of a study by Crane et al. (A-29) was to examine the efficacy, safety, and maternal satisfaction of

(a) oral misoprostol and

(b) intravenous oxytocin for labor induction in women with premature rupture of membranes at term. Researchers randomly assigned women to the two treatments.

For the 52 women who received oral misoprostol, the mean time in minutes to active labor was 358 minutes with a standard deviation of 308 minutes. For the 53 women taking oxytocin, the mean time was 483 minutes with a standard deviation of 144 minutes. Construct a 99 percent confidence interval for the difference in mean time to active labor for these two different medications.

What assumptions must be made about the reported data? Describe the population about which an inference can be made.