Qualitative Research

While my work is predominately qualitative, I understand the value of mixed methods and qualitative research as well. In both my undergraduate and graduate studies, I completed coursework focused on statistics and public health data analysis.

As part of my studies, we were asked to practice three types of statistical analysis on large, national health data sets. I pulled from two datasets for this exercise: The Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System 2013 (BRFSS) and the National Health Interview Survey 2015 (NHIS). The BRFSS is a state-led, CDC-assisted system of telephone surveys designed to collect health-related data on all U.S. states, the District of Columbia, and three U.S. territories. The NHIS is a cross-sectional household interview survey that monitors the health of the civilian noninstitutionalized population of the United States.

The correlational test uses NHIS data, and the other two questions pull from the BRFSS data. Scroll through the slides to view my work on this exercise and download my methods and results from each test.

Correlations

Research Question: Is there a relationship between how many hours of sleep respondents get and how many days they have felt nervous in the past 30 days?

Why This Test? Correlation tests analyze the relationship between two continuous variables. For this question, the number of hours respondents slept and the number of days they felt nervous in the past 30 days are both continuous variables measured in hours and days. I expect to see a negative relationship between hours of sleep and nervousness as anxiety and nervousness are common hindrances to adequate sleep.

Results: The p-value of .000 is less than .05, so we can conclude that there was a significant relationship between hours slept and nervousness over the past 30 days for this data set.

Click to Download Methods and Results