Module 9 content and learning outcomes

¶ … epidemiological data, and then exploring possibility of a causal connection between lack of government funding for community-based treatments and increase in HIV incidence in queer male communities.

Both statistical descriptive and inferential tests will be employed.

The descriptive tests summarize and describe the data. These would include frequency analysis e.g. Of the amount of men diagnosed as queer, and frequency that the participants experienced homophobia. Univariate analysis would focus on one variable, e.g. frequency of homophobia, by analyzing the mean, the distribution, the central tendency, and the dispersion of the occurrence.

The distribution would provide some assumption of the pattern of the range: whether normal or skewed.

The central tendency would, in this case, measure the mean of the data, i.e. average number of males that experienced discriminatory treatment. Dispersion would be another descriptive tool that measures the spread of values around the central tendency, i.e. range and standard deviation.

Finally, we would want to check significant level, i.e. whether observational results differ significantly from expected results. The effect size tells me whether the statistical significance is of importance (since for large sample sizes, as in this case, a small effect size can assume undue significance).

Cross-tabulation is another descriptive tool that will be used to gather and classify the data in a contingency table. For instance: (sample) 4 (gender) males [homophobia] physically abused.

Graphs such as a histogram would show distribution and density of the data.

AQ-Q plot may be used to compare homophobia with homosexuality by plotting the quantiles against each other. This would tell me how properties such as location, scale, and skewness are similar or different in the two distributions.

A scatter plot would also diagram the shape of the association, whilst a box-plot would indicate outliers and show the degree of dispersion and skewness. Box plots can be used here to diagram each of the forms of homophobia.

Inferential statistics