Exercises for Week 2:
1 – You are a volunteer member of a community organisation and you are asked to provide advice to
the Executive Committee on how frequently volunteer members should be required to refresh basic first
aid and resuscitation skills in order to maintain active membership and participate in community
activities. You decide to conduct a study of members to determine if the length of time since undertaking
CPR training relates to confidence and skills to administer CPR in an emergency situation.
a) State a possible null and alternative hypothesis?
A POSSIBLE ANSWER IS::
Ha: Confidence to administer CPR is negatively correlated with length of time (months) since
completion of an accredited CPR training course.
Ho: There is no correlation between length of time since completion of an accredited CPR
training course and confidence to administer CPR.
2 – You read a research paper that describes how the ‘walkability’ score of an environment is an
important predictor of physical activity. You decide to conduct a study to determine if the same principle
applies regarding bike riding (Rideability).
a) Describe a possible research question to address this issue
b) State a null and an alternative hypothesis to test this research question?
POSSIBLE QUESTION: Does the rideability score of a suburb impact upon the amount of
physical activity undertaken each week by individuals?
POSSIBLE ALTERNATIVE HYPOTHESIS: Higher rideability score for the suburb an individual
lives within will be positively correlated with increased time spent in moderate-vigorous physical
activity.
POSSIBLE NULL HYPOTHES: There is no correlation between rideability score and time spent in
moderate – vigorous physical activity.
3 - In a study of whether members of different Health Science streams drink more alcohol than students in
other streams, from the list below, what would the null hypothesis be? Explain your answer.
a) Students who are not in Health Sciences drink more than students who are in Health Sciences.
b) Most students do not drink alcohol
c) There is no difference in the amount of alcohol consumed by students in the different Health Science
streams.
d) Students in some streams drink more than students in other streams.
The answer is C – no difference between groups.
4) – You are in a staff meeting and realise you failed to read the research paper your boss sent around
to everyone. He asks for all the interns present to comment on the studies hypothesis. See attached
paper as an example – or feel free to use your own if you have a good one.
a) Quickly skim the attached paper and locate the study hypotheses.
b) Has the null or the alternative hypothesis been stated.
c) Is the hypothesis appropriate to answer the research question.
5) Why do good samples make for good tests of research hypotheses?
A good sample is highly representative of the population from which it is selected. When it is a
good sample, it means that you can get a more true reading of actual population characteristics,
and everything from your most basic findings to your inference to other populations is increased
in accuracy.
