"On the basis of a univariate analysis of patient demographic factors and clinical characteristics, risk for mortality at 48 hrs was associated with living in a nursing home"
I want to understand the meaning of univariate, demographic factors, nursing home and then the whole sentence.
2006-12-05 10:58:24 · 4 answers · asked by ahmed S 1 in Education & Reference ➔ Words & Wordplay
Univariate means having one variate, which means having one random variable.
This means that if you want to do an experiment, you keep everything the same and then change one thing. By changing only one variable you see what effect changing that variable has.
"Demographic factors" means the makeup of the patient group.
These would include things like age, sex, race, socio-economic
status, and perhaps other factors like geographic location.
A nursing home is a long-term care facility for elderly people. The people live at the home which is their permanent living quarters, and there are nurses and doctors on the premises to look after the patients' medical needs.
This sentence is saying that the risk for dying of a certain disease (The article must specify the disease. I assume it is heart attack or stroke) in the first 48 hours comes from living in a nursing home. What it means by speaking of univariate analysis and demograpic factors, is that if you look at all the people who had the disease, the only difference between the ones who survived and the ones who died in the first 48 hours,
was the fact that the ones who died lived in a nursing home.
For example, if you look at all the 78 yr old white males who had never experienced a stroke, (for explanation I am using stroke as the disease) this study would show that the risk of death was greater for those living in the nursing home. Whether or not the patients lived in the nursing home was the only factor that was different between the patients. That is, the ages, sex, race, and general health factors were all the same so those were not the factors which caused the difference in mortality rate. Only one factor was different, and that was the fact that some lived in a nursing home.
I hope this makes it clear .
2006-12-05 11:44:04 · answer #1 · answered by True Blue 6 · 0⤊ 0⤋
A univariate analysis is a way of statistically examining data. In a univariate anlysis, each variable in a data set is examined separately. Demographic factors are defining charactersitics of the patients being studied. Things like age, sex, where they live, whether or not they are married, etc. Nursing home? An institution that provides 24-hour / day care to individuals who are unable to live on their own. Most often the elderly, but also those who are disabled in some other way. So, the sentence is basically saying that the statistical analysis of the various characteristics of the patients studied found that the risk for mortality (the chances of dying) was connected to a patient's status of living in a nursing home. Probably, the study being described found that the patients who were living in a nursing home were more likely to die within 48 hours than those who were not. Very complicated sentence. Hope that helped.
2006-12-05 19:26:46 · answer #2 · answered by senlin 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
in one study of patient characteristics the risk of death for 48 hours at a time was accociated with living in a nursing home
tthat is what it means enjoy...why would u wanna know this any way??
2006-12-05 19:17:16 · answer #3 · answered by bbp019 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
That's a good example of how to pervert the English language.
2006-12-05 19:04:36 · answer #4 · answered by Carlos R 5 · 0⤊ 0⤋