The citizens of Testalot have come to trust your scientific analyses on their previous questions, and now they’ve come to you again for help on another important local issue.

INSTRUCTIONS TO CANDIDATES

ANSWER ALL QUESTIONS

The citizens of Testalot have come to trust your scientific analyses on their previous questions, and now they’ve come to you again for help on another important local issue.  

 

The concerned citizens have noted an increase in the use of the food bank by local families over the last 2 years.  Anecdotally, some of these families have related that the increase in housing rental and utility costs have forced them to use the food bank more frequently because they have less income left over to spend on food.  The concerned citizens want to investigate this hypothesis further because, if true, they are prepared to lobby their city councillors to institute a policy to freeze rental increases over the next several years in order to prevent this problem from worsening while giving them time to come up with other constructive solutions to this important community health issue.

 

With a group of stakeholders, you devise the following causal model to explain your hypothesis about the effect of the exposure on the outcome of interest.

 

 

 

 

Q1.  In the directed acyclic graph, identify the following variables (if applicable):

a) Exposure

b) Outcome

c) Confounding

d) Collider

e) Mediator

Q2. Which variables, besides the exposure and outcome variables, do you need to collect data on to test your hypothesis about the total effect of exposure on outcome?

 

You collect data on a random sample of 150 families in Testalot who have used the Food Bank at least once in the last 12 months.  See the accompanying dataset and data dictionary.

 

For all subsequent questions, please include STATA code in your report or as a separate file.

 

Q3.  Define the data types for the following variables.

a) Food income

b) Food bank use

c) housing costs

d) family size

 

Q4. Construct a frequency graph for the outcome variable.  Describe its distribution.

 

Q4. Construct a relational graph between the exposure and outcome.

 

Q5. Is there an association between the exposure and outcome?  If so, describe the association between the exposure and outcome.  

 

Q6. What statistical test could you use to measure this association between exposure and outcome?

 

Q7. What statistical test could you use to test if the hypothetical associations you’ve defined in your causal diagram exist?

 

Q8. What is the total effect of the exposure on the outcome?  What is your confidence in this estimate of the total effect?

 

Q9. Interpret the total effect of the exposure on the outcome.

 

Q10. What would you predict would be the food bank use in the following 12 months in a family with 3 members, a monthly food income budget of $350, and housing costs of $1700 per month?

 

Q11. Are any of the assumptions violated in the statistical model you chose to estimate the total effect of the exposure on the outcome?

 

Q12. What would you recommend to the citizens of Testalot about their proposed lobbying plans?

 

 

Attachments:

Expert's Answer

265 Times Downloaded

Related Questions

. The fundamental operations of create, read, update, and delete (CRUD) in either Python or Java

CS 340 Milestone One Guidelines and Rubric  Overview: For this assignment, you will implement the fundamental operations of create, read, update,

. Develop a program to emulate a purchase transaction at a retail store. This  program will have two classes, a LineItem class and a Transaction class

Retail Transaction Programming Project  Project Requirements:  Develop a program to emulate a purchase transaction at a retail store. This

. The following program contains five errors. Identify the errors and fix them

7COM1028   Secure Systems Programming   Referral Coursework: Secure

. Accepts the following from a user: Item Name Item Quantity Item Price Allows the user to create a file to store the sales receipt contents

Create a GUI program that:Accepts the following from a user:Item NameItem QuantityItem PriceAllows the user to create a file to store the sales receip

. The final project will encompass developing a web service using a software stack and implementing an industry-standard interface. Regardless of whether you choose to pursue application development goals as a pure developer or as a software engineer

CS 340 Final Project Guidelines and Rubric  Overview The final project will encompass developing a web service using a software stack and impleme