Critical Evaluation of Transport Behaviours Among Older Teenagers

This report presents a critical evaluation of the article "Transport behaviors among older teenagers from semi-rural New Zealand" by Ward et al. (2015), published in the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health. The evaluation follows the STROBE checklist guidelines and focuses on clinical data collected from observational studies. Key areas of analysis include sample design, data presentation, response rates, demographic characteristics, summary measures, and statistical analysis. The report identifies shortcomings in the sample design, specifically regarding the differentiation between in-class and at-home participants, and ambiguities in data presentation related to sample sizes for various factors. It also notes the absence of information on missing data and confidence intervals in the Chi-square test analysis. While demographic characteristics are discussed, the report points out the lack of consideration for missing data within these characteristics. The evaluation concludes by highlighting the analysis of associations between transportation mode and gender, while noting the absence of sensitivity analysis in the original paper. Desklib provides access to similar solved assignments and past papers.

Running head: BIOLOGOCAL STATSTISTICS
Biologocal Statstistics
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1BIOLOGOCAL STATSTISTICS
Table of Contents
Critical evaluation............................................................................................................................2
Item 10.........................................................................................................................................2
Item 12.........................................................................................................................................2
Item 13.........................................................................................................................................2
Item 14.........................................................................................................................................3
Item 15.........................................................................................................................................3
Item 16.........................................................................................................................................3
Item 17.........................................................................................................................................3

2BIOLOGOCAL STATSTISTICS
Critical evaluation
The paper attempts to evaluate critically the article named “Transport behaviors among
older teenagers from semi-rural New Zealand”. Ward et al. have developed the concerned article
in the year 2015 and published in a journal named “Australian and New Zealand journal of
public health. Objective of the critical evaluation is to prepare a report based on clinical data
collected observational studies. The evaluation follows the guidelines given in Strobe’ checklist.
Item 10
The referenced article does not have proper sample design. For gathering observational
data, request sent to 13 school. Among the 13 school, 12 gave concern to participation in the
study. The final study consists of participants both from class study and in-home. The article
though mentioned total number of participating students in the study but it does not differentiate
between in class and at home participants. So far as gender differentiation in concerned the study
has clearly specified number of female and number of male participant. No classification
however is given based on the mode of study.
Item 12
The article presents specific mode of transport both as a form of individual number of
participant and corresponding percentage of total participants. The transportation percentage has
also been portrayed in the form of frequency as well as associated percentage. Ambiguity
however has been found regarding the sample size of males and female, transportation mode,
transport frustration and license. There is no disclosure about missing sample data in the study.
Moreover, the article does not give any clear presentation for analysis of Chi-Square test.

3BIOLOGOCAL STATSTISTICS
Item 13
The article though has mentioned the rate of collected response but it does not provide
any information about number of students in the participating 12 schools. Total response rate as
mentioned in the research paper is 71.5 percent. For class-based participants response rate is 77.2
percent while the same for in home participants is 65.6 percent.
Item 14
The article discusses different demographic characteristics of the participants such as
gender, location, age, weekly income and ethnicity. The article however does not discusses
anything regarding missing data.
Item 15
Table 3 of the article presents the summary measures of the activities. The summary
measures include mean, standard deviation and maximum and minimum activity hours for the
students. Summary statistics of male and female participants have also been documented in the
article.
Item 16
Chi-square test is used to conduct the analysis. The article though provides test
significance no discussion is made on confidence interval.
Item 17

4BIOLOGOCAL STATSTISTICS
The paper conducts analysis into three subgroups. The article discusses association
between transportation mode and gender. The sensitivity analysis however is not a part of the
paper.