Relationship between Housing Improvement and Desire to Stop Smoking

Running head: Global Health 1
Masters in Global Health
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Global Health
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Question 1
The study by Bond, Egan, Kearns, Clark, and Tannahill (2013) is a quasi-experimental. The study design
is used in situations where it is not possible to randomly assign the participants to groups. But the
assignment to conditions is through administrator selection (White & Sabarwal, 2014). For instance, the
study population consisted of the less fortunate neighbourhoods of Glasgow who had low income. It
could not have been possible to randomly assign the participants to study groups, hence the reason why
the authors randomly sampled the households to be included in the study.
The quasi-experimental design identifies a contrast group that is very similar to the experimental group
based on the baseline features. The group of comparison identifies the expected outcomes in the event
that the program or policy has not been affected. Thus, any variations in the findings of the experimental
and control groups are attributed to the program or policy (White & Sabarwal, 2014). The study
compared smoking and the desire to stop smoking among the beneficiaries of housing improvements
(HI) against non-HI.
Question 2
H0: Housing improvements result in the reduction in smoking or the desire to stop smoking and can,
therefore, be attributed to enhancements in mental health or decrease in stress successive to the HI.
H1: Housing improvements doesn’t result in the reduction in smoking or an intention to quit smoking and
thus cannot be explained by enhancements in mental health or decrease in stress successive to the HI.
Question 3
The study factor in the study was housing improvement and was measured based on the assessment of the
surveyor of each home regarding the internal and external renovation of the homes. The specific house
improvements included the renovation of the outside cladding, roofs, windows, kitchen, and electrical
repairs (GoWell, 2010).
Question 4
The outcome factors included smoking and the intention to quit smoking and the responses were
measured using categorical variables. For instance, the subjects were requested to indicate their frequency
in smoking, whether it was regular, occasional, or had never smoked. Dichotomous variables (yes or no)
were also used to indicate whether the subjects had any intention to stop smoking.

Global Health
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Mental health and stress assessments were also used to measure the decline in smoking or the desire to
stop smoking as a result of housing improvements. Mental health was measured using the SF-12v2
mental health scale health survey. The scores of the twelve questions based on the SF-12v2 procedure
were calculated and arranged from 0 to 100, in which 100 represented the highest health level whereas 0
represented the least health level (Vilagut et al., 2013). Stress or depression was determined by asking the
participants whether they had sought for the services of a family doctor or general practitioner regarding
depression or anxiety in the past year. Additionally, the stress or depression levels were measured by
asking the participants to indicate whether they had experienced any of the listed symptoms of depression
or stress within the past year.
Question 5
The outcomes in table 2 show that there exists a worthwhile relation between the desire to stop smoking
and experiencing housing improvement. The HI participants were twice more likely to stop smoking after
HI compared to their non-HI counterparts. The results suggest that smokers that had experienced HI were
more likely to cease smoking after house improvements than other smokers with no HI. The OR for the
desire to quit after HI is 1.25, which is >1, meaning the HI is better than the desire to quit smoking, hence
a positive association. On the other hand, the 95% CI is 0.68 to 2.29, which crosses 1 implying that there
is no significant difference between HI and the desire to stop smoking. The negative association as a
result of the interpretation of the CI interval is because the positive association is only upheld after
adjustments for sociodemographic characteristics and the previous statement of the willingness to stop
smoking
Question 6
The possible sources of selection bias include randomization and the manner in which the participants
were selected to participate (Bärnighausen et al., 2017; Furtak, Seidel, Iverson, & Briggs, 2012). The
addresses of the 14 neighbourhoods were selected at random and in some instances, all addresses were
included in the study. But it was impossible to randomly assign specific adults from each household to
either the intervention or comparison group. This is likely to lead to selection bias because the selection
of the residential addresses can be interfered with by the researcher. The authors have indicated that all
smaller residential households were included in the study alongside the households that had been
randomly selected. There is a likelihood of selection bias especially in the smaller households, which
were not randomly selected. For instance, if the researcher preferentially selected smaller households with