- With pain being the 6th vital sign, working in intake it is important to ask about our patients’ current pain. For 12 intake inmates reporting pain on a numerical scale of 1- 10, the mean pain rating is greater than 5/10. The variable is the pain rating for the incoming patients. I predicted that the mean would be above 6/10 and that was incorrect. Per week 7 lesson (2021), “Hypothesis testing is a process that uses sample statistics to test a claim about the value of a population parameter.” First stated the claim above. Next, I will determine if this is a Null or alternative hypothesis, “The null and alternative hypotheses are two competing claims that researchers weigh evidence for and against using a statistical test” (Turney, 2022). In this case, the claim is an alternative hypothesis because the use of “or equal to” is not included. The type of error identified is a type 1 error, and according to Holmes (2017), “α = probability of a Type I error = P(Type I error) = probability of rejecting the null hypothesis when the null hypothesis is true: rejecting a good null.” When basing the error type on the alternative hypothesis we find that it is rejecting the null hypothesis because the average pain score is less than or equal to 5/10 when the average pain score is actually greater than 5/10.
RESOURCE –
Chamberlain College of Nursing (2021). Math 225N Statistical Reasoning for Health Sciences. Week 7 Lesson. Downers Grove, IL. Online Publication.
Holmes, A., Illowsky, B., & Dean, S. (2017). Introductory business statistics. Openstax. https://openstax.org/details/books/introductory-business-statisticsLinks to an external site.
Turney, S. (2022, May 13). Null and Alternative Hypotheses | Definitions & Examples. Scribbr. https://www.scribbr.com/statistics/null-and-alternative-hypotheses/Links to an external site.
