Extra Credit Assignment

Deadline

Friday, December 15, 11:59 PM

Note: Late submissions will not be accepted because I have to submit final grades shortly after the deadline.

Extra credit calculation

If you complete this assignment, the score will count for 50% of your lowest data analysis assignment score. In other words, I will take the mean of your score on this assignment and your lowest DAA score and that will be 15% of your final course grade. If you complete this assignment and the score happens to be lower than your lowest DAA score, then I will not factor this into your final grade.

Assignment

Imagine that a friend approaches you and makes the following claim:

“I heard that the COVID vaccine gives people amnesia”

You find this journal article that relates to your friend’s statement:

Merino, D., Gérard, A. O., Van Obberghen, E. K., Ben Othman, N., Ettore, E., Giordana, B., ... & Drici, M. D. (2022). COVID-19 vaccine-associated transient global amnesia: A disproportionality analysis of the WHO safety database. Frontiers in Pharmacology, 13, 909412.

Click here to download the article

For this assignment, you will write a report that answers the following question: Does the statistical analysis presented in the article support your friend’s statement?

There is no page limit or minimum for this assignment; you are expected to thoroughly respond to the question above using the principles and concepts we have discussed throughout the semester. No code needs to be written for this, so you do not need to generate the report in R/Quarto. You will submit your report as a PDF. Be sure to cite the journal article appropriately.

Address the questions below in your report to guide your response (note: this should still be written as a report, not as bulleted answers to the list of questions):

  • What is the research question that the article seeks to answer?

  • What is the outcome of interest?

  • How were the data collected?

  • What are the comparison groups?

  • What is the statistical analysis method used?

  • Is the statistical analysis method appropriate? How can it be improved?

  • Given your answers to the questions about the structure of the data and the analysis, distinguish between the following:

    • the conclusion that your friend drew

    • the conclusion that the authors drew

    • the conclusion that can be drawn based on the analysis