Assignment 4

Introduction

This portion of the practice asks you to apply your quantitative analysis skills to address several questions about spending for end-of-life care for Medicare decedents with chronic illness during their last two years of life (deaths occurring 2001-2005). The Assignment 4 Excel file includes data related to spending, general information about hospitals, resource inputs, and patient experience during end-of-life care. A list of the variables included in the data file and their definitions are included on the third page of this document.

Question 1:

Review the data in the Excel file as well as the information about the dataset on the next page.

1. Divide the sample into two halves based upon one of the variables within the data set (e.g., you might want to divide the sample based on outpatient spending low vs. high – you’d simply sort the data on the outpatient spending variable and then split the group [somewhat arbitrarily] into roughly two halves based on this single variable).
2. Choose a second variable of interest. For example, you might want to see if there is a difference in the reimbursement per patient day between the facilities with high outpatient spending and those with low outpatient spending.
3. Complete some basic descriptive statistics related to your variables so that you can describe the variables and interpret some descriptive differences between the two groups. Include at least one frequency table and one chart in your analysis.
4. Based upon the two groups – high and low – complete a two-sample independent t-test to see if there is a significant difference between the two groups based on the second variable that you choose. Use the hypothesis testing steps that we reviewed in class and utilized in Assignment 1.
5. Show your work for Question 1 in a new tab in the Excel file, leaving the "raw data" in the first tab, the "Data" tab.
6. In a separate Word file, provide basic descriptive statistics, including your frequency table and chart, regarding your data in a single paragraph. Your write-up should be similar to how you would see the descriptive statistics narrative in a typical journal article.
7. In this same Word file, write out your hypothesis testing steps (from #4 above) and provide an inferential analysis for your t-test.

Price: $24.06

Solution: The downloadable solution consists of 12 pages, 1206 words and 5 charts.
Deliverable: Word Document