Biostatistics Project

OVERVIEW
The project is based on the primary source article that appeared in the April 2017 issue of the Mental Health and Physical Activity journal

(available in Blackboard).

Note on Academic Honesty
“Students are expected to abide by the College’s Academic Honesty Policy as explained in the Student Handbook. Plagiarism is considered a

violation of this policy. Plagiarism is defined as submitting another person’s work as one’s own without proper acknowledgement or using the

words or ideas of others without crediting the source of those words or ideas. In order to deter plagiarism and ensure appropriate use of

resources in student research and learning, the College subscribes to a plagiarism prevention service, www.turnitin.com. Faculty may request

students to submit their written work electronically in order to verify that when ideas of others are used they are cited appropriately. The

course syllabus identifies student work that must be submitted electronically for such review, and provides directions for doing so.”

WRITING RECOMMENDATIONS
I have carefully read, reviewed and chosen the journal article; the article is peer-reviewed and statistically valid.

Please note that the project is time consuming. Don’t start working on it one week before the due date; that would be too late!

Do not get bogged down in all the details. Read the article once to gain an overall understanding of it. Then go back and read the

article in more detail, write notes in the margins, and ask me clarifying questions.

You must include in your project the actual questions. Your answer to a question should not be just a number; each answer is an

exercise in scientific writing. Therefore, you must answer the questions using detailed scientific explanations, with documented references

supported by the peer-reviewed journal article. However, don’t write endless paragraphs, as they do not necessarily improve the quality of your

answers.

Spell-check your final document and use a thesaurus to find synonyms and antonyms.

Do not use Wikipedia for your references!!! While it can be used to initiate a research topic, it is not a reliable scholarly

reference.

I strongly recommend that you visit the Writing Center (W400) for help and feedback on writing this project.

SUBMISSION INSTRUCTIONS

Please hand in a hard copy of your project.
References should be in APA format shown at the end of your project. Excellent help with APA formatting is available on The Purdue

Online Writing Lab website (https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/).
Formatting:
Please do not delete the questions.
Please leave a line space between your answer and the next question (hard to grade otherwise).
The project should be typed using 9 or 10-point font, 1.5 line spacing.
Please minimize the number of printed pages as much as possible.
Delete these instructions.
Double-side the printed copy of your project.
Staple the document.
Your project must include a title, course name, your name, and submission date (see below).

Biostatistics Project
MAT461 – Biostatistics
Your Name
Date
QUESTIONS
Please use COMPLETE sentences to answer the questions; remember to statistically justify them.
Please note that the questions are in the order in which you will find answers while reading the article.
Several questions refer to actual text in the article (not just tables and figures).

What is the purpose of this study? In other words, what are the hypotheses tested in this study?

Describe the study design presented in this paper; include study type, sample size, participants and periods of the data collection.

How does the World Health Organization (WHO) define mental health?

Describe the most common problems associated with mental disease and the incidence of the disease.

Define physical self-concept, psychological well-being and psychological difficulties in the context of this study.

Refer to Table 1 on page 125:
In the context of this table, please list which characteristics are quantitative.

QUANTITATIVE:

What percentage of the participants are females?

What percentage of the participants are in the highest socioeconomic position?

Which measure varies more, the body mass index (BMI) or the height? Why?

Using the Empirical Rule, estimate the participants’ minimum and maximum age.

Briefly describe the three Questionnaires defined in section 2.4; include the name, scale range and scale interpretation for each one

of them.

Briefly describe the multi-level linear regression statistical method used to analyze the data in this study.

What are the confounders in this study? Please list them and state what the researchers did about them.

Refer to Table 2 on page 127:
At Time 2 (T2), on which category of screen-time do boys spend the least amount of their time? How do you know?

At T2, do girls or boys show a higher variation in time devoted to homework? How do you know?

Refer to Table 3 on page 127:
The caption identifies B as the unstandardized regression coefficient and β as the standardized regression coefficient; define each

statistic and explain the differences between the two of them.

Which one of the two statistics, B or β, would you use to draw conclusions in the study? Why?

In the context of this table, the p value refers to the standardized regression coefficient β. Identify and state the values of all

statistically significant standardized regression coefficients β.

In the context of this table, write a sentence to interpret β=-0.23.

In the context of this table, write a sentence to interpret R^2=0.361.

Are there statistically significant associations between screen-time use for homework and any mental health indicators? How do you

know?

What are the possible influences that explain the adverse associations in physical self-concept? In addition, what are the possible

mechanisms that negatively affect psychological well-being?

Refer to Figures 1 and 2 on page 128:
What type of variable is shown on the x-axis of each figure?

Data shown in Figures 1 and 2 are also in Table 2. Identify in Table 2 which rows correspond to Figure 1 and which rows correspond to

Figure 2.

Which group, females or males, engages in more recreational screen-time at time T1? Why?

Which group, females or males, shows better psychological well-being at time T1? Why?

What are the strengths of this study?

What are the limitations of this study?

What is the conclusion of this study?

Did the authors have any conflicts of interest while conducting this study?

What is the clinical significance of this study? In other words, how does this study help you? Would you make any changes in your

lifestyle based on this study?