Risk Factors for Low Birth Weight Rates of infant mortality, birth defect, and premature labor are high for babies with low birth weight. There are many factors that may contribute to low birth weight. In this activity, we use data from a random sample of women who participated in a study in 1986 at the Baystate Medical Center in Springfield, MA. (Source: Hosmer and Lemeshow (2000), Applied Logistic Regression: Second Edition.) For the 30 women in the study with a history of premature labor, a proportion of 18/30 = 0.60 (60%) had babies with low birth weight. For the remaining 159 women, a proportion of 41/159 = 0.26 (26%) had babies with low birth weight. We now investigate the following research question: do the data provide evidence that the proportion of babies born with low birth weight is higher for women with a history of premature labor? This question is answered with a hypothesis test. To conduct the test we use a 1% level of significance.Question 1:Is this study observational or experimental?Question 2:Before analyzing the data, use your own experience and intuition to predict what the data will show. Do you think the proportion of babies with low birth weight is higher for women with a history of premature labor?

Respuesta :

This study is an observational one because it is not being introduce an intervention to study its effects, instead the effects of a risk factor are being studying just the way they are presented. Without doing a data analysis we can assume that the proportion of babies with low birth weight is higher for women with a history of premature labor because it can be considered as a direct cause of the weight of the baby. For the statistics study this is a conditional probability, we can think it as an influential event for the baby’s weight.