1. Based of discussion 4 below ,how the patients will be tested and what method
2. Describe the method you would choose for sampling from the population in your study. Explain specifically how you would do this; for example, chart reviews, surveys, every third e-mail address, and so forth.
3. Determine how you could affect the central tendency of your data.

Discussion 4

In my study I am testing the differences between two groups of patients:

1. The case group in my study consists of patients admitted to the ICU, who are 65 years old or older, and who have multiple chronic diseases including COPD and emphysema, who are intubated.

2. The control (comparison) group in my study consists of patients admitted to the ICU, who are 65 years old or older, and who have multiple chronic diseases including COPD and emphysema, who are NOT intubated.

My dependent variable in my study is the survival of the patients. Survival is defined as life is sustained with basic life functions such as independent breathing, basic self-care, and the ability to be aware of the surroundings for at least 2 weeks after being admitted to the ICU and being intubated. My independent variable is intubation. Hypothesis H0 (null) - intubation does not affect survival of the patients in the study group. Hypothesis H1 (alternative) - based on study research intubation has positive effect on prolonging patients' life (it increases the survival rate of elderly patients in ICU). I am trying to prove, based on this case-control study, that the elderly intubated patients will be having higher survival rate because the intubation will be helping to sustain their breathing while the disease will be cured in the meantime. I will calculate the p-value in order to demonstrate that the these two patient groups have different outcomes and to prove my hypothesis. The level of significance that I am going to use is 0.05. I chose the 0.05 p-value because it is typically used in research studies. The p-value of less than 0.05 will cause me to reject the null hypothesis (meaning that intubation doesn't help). Which will mean that the alternative hypothesis is true (intubation improves the survival rate). I can increase the power in my study by increasing the sample size, which is the amount of patients in the ICU included in my study (the larger the study group the smaller the random error