Final Milestone

Milestone Four: Data Analysis

Analysis was conducted using StatCrunch to determine to what extent does gender influence the length of hospital stays for MI patients. The two variables utilized for analysis were; los (length of stay) and gender which represents the participant’s gender where 0 = females and 1 = males. Histograms were determined to explain the distribution of los and gender. Figure 1 shows the histogram for los.

Analysis showed that the distributed is skewed to the right and most participants (55) had a los between 5 and 10. Figure 2 shows a bar graph for los and gender.

According to the graph, females (gender = 0) had the highest los compared to males (gender = 1). A bar graph suits the description of the distribution since the interest of the study was to determine the difference in length of stay between males and females for MI patients. Females seemed to stay longer compared to males.

A two-samples t-test was conducted to check whether the differences in average los between male and female patients, were statistically significant. Independent samples t-test can be used in a case where the dependent variable is quantitative and the independent variable is categorical with 2 groups. Table 1 shows the results of the analysis;

Analysis showed that the difference in average los between males ( N =35, M = 7.8, SD = 8.92) and females ( N =65, M = 6.32, SD = 3.34) was not statistically significant where t (98) = -1.19, p = 0.24. Since the p-value was greater than 0.05, we fail to reject the null hypothesis and conclude that the difference is not different from zero.

Based on analysis, the average length of stay for males ( M = 7.8) was slightly higher compared to females’ average los ( M = 6.32). The differences however, were not statistically significant which implies that the recovery speed was almost equal between males and females.

Appendix

Figure 1: Los

Figure 2: Los and Gender

Table 1: Analysis

Two sample T hypothesis test:

μ1 : Mean of Females μ2 : Mean of Males μ1 - μ2 : Difference between two means H0 : μ1 - μ2 = 0 HA : μ1 - μ2 ≠ 0 (with pooled variances)

Sample Statistics:

Sample	n	Mean	Std. dev.
Females	65	6.3230769	3.3406011
Males	35	7.8	8.9172668

Hypothesis test results:

Difference	Sample Diff.	Std. Err.	DF	T-Stat	P-value
μ1 - μ2	-1.4769231	1.2381423	98	-1.1928541	0.2358