You Make the Call

For each of the following situations, indicate whether or not the researcher made the right decision in regard to the test statistic they chose and why you say that.If you disagree with the choice, indicate what statistic you would use instead and why.

1.A PhD student is conducting a study to determine if there is a difference in facial skin breakdown (0 = no, 1 = yes) in intubated patients diagnosed with COVID when prophylactic face barriers are used during prone positioning, compared to no use of prophylactic face barriers. The researcher analyzes data for a 3-month period of time using an independent t-test. Did she make the right call?

2.A nurse working at a free obstetrics clinic notices that there is a high number of no-show appointments during certain times of the year. She hypothesizes that the number of no-shows may be related to school breaks, when women lack childcare. She would like to provide a free childcare service at the clinic during the times when schools are on break to address the problem, but she first needs to determine if there is in fact an association between the two variables. To provide supporting data, she decides to determine if there is an association between the number of no-shows (# of appointments missed each month) and the month of the year. The nurse decides to evaluate the data using a Spearman correlation. Did she make the right call?