ANSWER THE QUESTIONS IN DETAILS

Directions: Please complete all questions

What is asked for below is very specific. You have to think critically and answer in details.

1st READ

You wish to study alcohol consumption and its relationship to depression among older adults (age 60 and older). You earned a grant from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism worth $2,000,000 to perform a cohort study for five years. Specifically, you are going to study older adults with clinically-diagnosed depression and assess their alcohol consumption. Recall that there are different types of depression and these can be your groups to compare while conducting your study.

To understand different types of depression check the sources below

Depression and Older Adults: https://www.nia.nih.gov/health/depression-and-older-adults

Older Adults and Depression: https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/older-adults-and-depression/index.shtml

2nd ANSWER QUESTIONS BELOW IN DETAILS (don’t miss any)

Q1: Where will you obtain your study population and how? Is it a state, country, county, city/town? Do you use assisted living, nursing homes, residential households? There is no right answer and a mix is possible. Remember, what population do you wish to generalize your findings?

Q2: What tools will you use to collect data? Why? There are existing, validated tools.

Q3: What will be your outcome(s) of interest and why? Remember, you are not going to be giving anyone alcohol!

Q4: Could you implement a program or a number of programs designed to reduce alcohol consumption and reduce/eliminate their depression? Hint … yes. Describe the program(s) you will design and implement.

Q5: What statistical analysis could you employ? Be specific with respect to variables that would be measured and how you would analyze. For example, do not simply say “a regression or correlation”.

Q6: How would you assess potential health improvement from your program? Be specific. For example, would you weigh participants before, during, and after your program? Stress? Diet measures? Etc.

Q7: Do you need Institutional Review Board (IRB) approval? Where do you get the approval?

Q8: What inclusion criteria would you use? List at least three.

Q9: What exclusion criteria would you use? List at least three. Keep in mind, if you are including only men, do NOT state that being a woman is an exclusion criterion. Same with people younger than age 60.

Q10: What demographic variable data would you collect (e.g. age, race, education)? How would you choose to collect these data? You could use a mix of methods.

Q11: What anthropometric data would you collect? Would you get this from the work record and/or take your own measurements?

Q12: What medical data would you collect? For example, could you get blood sugar and blood pressure measurements? Who would collect these data?

Q13: Please list some of your questions that you would use to collect data via interview or survey of your participants. We will go through them in class to see their utility and how they might be improved, if needed.

Q14: How will you try to reduce bias in the study design and data collection phases?

Q15: What measure(s) of association will be calculated and why? If you are doing a pre-post-test of participant weight, for example, what would be an appropriate statistical test?

Q16: What potential confounding variables will you need to assess during the analysis? Why?

Q17: If you found that the greater the amount of depression (e.g. symptoms) was associated with a greater amount of alcohol consumption, how might you interpret such a result?

Q18: What if you found that depressed individuals consumed very little alcohol consumption? What if depression and alcoholism are inversely associated?