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Mother and Child Health: Research Methods. G.J.Ebrahim Editor Journal of Tropical Pediatrics, Oxford University Press . Data Collection and Analysis. Decide what information is required to answer the research question Source of the Information Method of data collection to be used.
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Mother and Child Health: Research Methods G.J.Ebrahim Editor Journal of Tropical Pediatrics, Oxford University Press.
Data Collection and Analysis • Decide what information is required to answer the research question • Source of the Information • Method of data collection to be used. • Validity and Reliability of the information obtained. • Key definitions
Exploratory Data Analysis • Identify the Outcome, Explanatory, Confounding and Control variables. • Look for patterns in the data for these variables by means of histogram (for skewness, gaps, multiple peaks, outliers); by Box & Whisker plots (box contains half the data points, whiskers data points in 0-25 and 75-100 percentiles) • Carry out transformations of data if indicated • Scatterplots for checking relationships between two variables.
Data Analysis • Initial descriptive analysis. In Frequency counts look for extreme values; missing values (>20 per cent bring error). • Cross tabulation. Main uses are described in the accompanying notes. • Most basic analysis is bivariate (relationship between two variables)
Common statistical Tests • Relationship between two variables can be assessed by 2 test and correlation coefficient • ‘t’ test is used for comparing two means (i.e. a categorical explanatory and a numerical outcome variable e.g. sex and age) • paired ‘t’ test for matched pairs • Analysis of variance (ANOVA) is like the ‘t’ test but with more than 2 categories