Question

For example, Ralph is a healthcare administration leader who is interested in evaluating whether the mean patient satisfaction scores for his hospital are significantly different from 87 at the .05 level. He gathers a sample of 100 observations and finds that the sample mean is 83 and the standard deviation is 5. Using a t-distribution, he generates a two-sided confidence interval (CI) of 83 +/- 1.984217 *5/sqrt(100). The 95% CI is then (82.007, 83.992). If repeated intervals were conducted identically, 95% should contain the population mean. The two-sided hypothesis test can be formulated and tested just with this interval. Ho: Mu = 87, Ha: Mu<>87. Alpha = .05. If he assumes normality and that population standard deviation is unknown, he selects the t-distribution. After constructing a 95% CI, he notes that 87 is not in the interval, so he can reject the null hypothesis that the mean satisfaction rates are 87. In fact, he has an evidence-based analysis to suggest that the mean satisfaction rates are not equal to (less than) 87.

For example how will a CI might be used to support hypothesis testing in a healthcare scenario.

Answer 1

A confidence interval is a range of values that is likely to contain an unknown population parameters..we use confidence intervals to bound the mean or standard deviation,but it can also obtain them for regression coefficients, proportions,rates of occurence and for the difference between population..but there are common misconception between P values and confidence interval (CI).. Hypothesis test helps findout sampling errors between a sample and the entire population.. Hypothesis testing important procedure in health care statistics..it evaluates two mutually exclusive statement about a population to determine which statement is best supported by the sample data..

In this scenario two-sided hypothesis test formulated and tested just with this interval..He selects t- distribution if he can not assume standard deviation..here confidence interval (CI) helped him to constructing a 95%,he notes 87 is not in the interval,so he rejected null hypothesis..he got a evidence--based analysis..so as I said before confidence interval useful to support hypothesis testing in health care to find the population parameters, patient satisfaction scores etc..