Measurement and Descriptive Analysis Application Exercises

Exercise 1

While working in a community pharmacy you decide to survey a group of patients to gain a
greater understanding of adherence levels to the new hepatitis C medication Sovaldi
(sofosbuvir). Based on your prescription records in your pharmacy, you hypothesize that the
median age for excellent adherence will be lower in female patients compared to male patients
taking Sovaldi.

You have collected your data and now you want to summarize and present all the data you have
on patients who reported excellent adherence (self-reported adherence as excellent in your
questionnaire).

Your raw age (in years) data for all patients who have excellent adherence is as follows:
All patients (N = 18): 20, 65, 55, 40, 42, 62, 33, 25, 30, 30, 28, 56, 63, 52, 35, 29, 58, 34
Males (N = 9): 20, 55, 42, 62, 30, 28, 63, 52, 58
Females (N = 9): 65, 40, 33, 25, 30, 56, 35, 29, 34

All Patients Male Patients Female Patients

Mode 30 n/a n/a
Median 37.5 52 34
Mean 42.1 45.6 38.6
Range 45 (65-20) 43 (63-20) 40 (65-25)
Interquartile Range 26 (56-30) 31 (60-29) 18.5 (48-29.5)
(IQR)

Hypothesis was correct. The median age for excellent adherence was lower in females compared
to males.

Mode (all patients) = number that appears most frequently = 30 (two times)
Median (all patients) = number in middle in list of ascending order = 37.5
Mean (all patients) = average of all values = 757.8 / 18 = 42.1
Range (all patients) = subtract highest value from lowest value = 65 – 20 = 45
IQR (all patients) = subtract median from upper half (Q3) from median from lower half (Q1) =
Q3 – Q1 = 56 – 30 = 26
 Exercise 2

You are a practicing pharmacist and want to find out the factors that are associated with
pharmacists being concerned about furnishing hormonal contraceptives to patients under 18.
You conduct a survey to evaluate pharmacists’ attitudes, perceptions and behaviors.

The factors you are interested in are:

 Have pharmacists had previous training (yes/no)

 Do pharmacists live in a health shortage area (yes/no)
 Zip code of practicing pharmacists
 Gender
 Year first licensed as a pharmacist

Level of
Best Visual
Variable Qualitative/Quantitative Discrete/Continuous Measuremen
Representation
t
Bar chart, pie
Training in Furnishing Quantitative Discrete Nominal
chart
Practice in Health Bar chart, pie
Quantitative Discrete Nominal
Storage Area chart
Zip Code Quantitative Discrete Nominal Bar chart
Bar chart, pie
Gender Quantitative Discrete Nominal
chart
Histogram, box
Age Quantitative Continuous Ratio
plot
Histogram, box
Year Licensed Quantitative Continuous Ratio
plot
Concerned about Bar chart, pie
Quantitative Discrete Ordinal
furnishing to < 18 yrs chart

- Quantitative – numerical/countable information

o Discrete – few possible values or categories (limited options)
o Continuous – infinite values in a given range (infinite options)
- Qualitative – meaningful information in words
o Nominal – data that can be used to count or report frequency
o Ratio – ranked data w/ distance WITH defined zero
o Interval – ranked data w/ distance WITHOUT defined zero
o Ordinal – data that can be used to provide counts, median and percentiles

- Nominal/Ordinal + discrete values = use bar graph or pie graph

- Ratio + continuous values = use histogram or box plot
 Study Sample
N = 100
n (%)
Have you had training in furnishing?
Yes 34 (35.4)
No 64.6 (64.6)
Practice in a health shortage area?
Yes 11 (11.1)
No 88 (88.9)
Gender
Males 40 (40.4)
Females 59 (59.6)
Age (yrs)
Mean ± SD 40.99 ± 13.64
Range 23 – 75
Year first licensed?
Mean ± SD 2002.7 ± 14.1
Range 1960-2017
I am concerned about furnishing
Strongly agree 13 (13.1)
Agree 39 (39.4)
Neither agree nor disagree 20 (20.2)
Disagree 19 (19.2)
Strongly disagree 8 (8.1)

Mean age = (sum of ages) / (total # of data points) = 4058 / 99 = 40.99

Median age = line up data points in ascending order and find middle point = 35
Skew = positive (mean > median)