Inferential Statistics - Essay Example

Inferential Statistics In this essay, Hammet et al. article en d “Physician Review of Workers Compensation Case Files: Can It Affect Decision Outcomes?” will be the main article for analysis. The authors aimed at establishing whether worker’s compensation can in any way affect decision outcomes.The research hypothesis for the studyThe hypothesis of the study was that the review of workers file and compensation had a significant impact on the decision outcomes of their cases. The null hypothesis would state that there was no such relationship among the two variables.

The dependent variable and the independent variable(s)The independent variable was “physician review of workers’ compensation case files”. The study aimed at establishing whether the Federal workers’ compensation cases referred to Navy physicians for medical opinions in any way had an influence on the final decision made by the Department of Labor’s Office of Workers’ Compensation Programs (OWCPs) (p.18). Some independent variables were claimant’s age and categories of the case (p.19). The dependent variable was “decision outcomes”.

The study tested whether decision outcome in the compensation cases was dependent on the physician’s review report.The method for selecting participants in the studyThe researchers used a descriptive epidemiological study to select the 325 worker’s compensation cases from the navy injury compensation programme administrators. The cases were sampled from all over the United States between 2006 and 2010. The filed selected cases were treated as participants in this study, although the owners were not directly interviewed.

The particular types of bias in the studyThe particular bias inherent in the study was that the cases tested were the ones which the ICPAs analysed as unusual, and thus needed a support from a physician. If this was the case, the physicians would have rejected most of the cases, which did not require a physician to strengthen the claim (p.19). However, the researchers were alarmed by the fact that physicians recommended in favour of the claimant in most of the referred cases. Since the review was found to influence decision, the whole process might have had a degree of bias.

Statistical testing procedure used to analyze the results of the studyIn the study, the researchers used retrospective case study and descriptive analysis of the 258 physician opinion letters written between 2006 and 2010. They used analysis of variance (ANOVA) to test the significance of the relationship between the dependent and independent variables.Ethical concerns about the way the study was conductedOne ethical concern is the disclosure of the medical records of the claimants without their consent.

Given that they were not requested when their information was being tracked, neither were their physicians, this can raise concerns on the confidentiality of the information that their physicians forward to the Department of Labor’s Office of Workers’ Compensation Programs (OWCPs).The researchers of the study should consider if there is a way of informing the claimants that they are retrieving their personal health information in future should they want to carry a similar study. They should otherwise consider if the OWCPs owns the information once it is given to them in a way they can give it out for research purposes.

The other consideration the researchers should make is to find how they can minimize the bias emanating from the study. ReferencesHammett, M., Jankosky, C., Muller, J., Hughes, E., & Litow, F. (2012). Physician Review of Workers Compensation Case Files: Can It Affect Decision Outcomes? Military Medicine, 177(1), 17-22.