Patient Perception of Obstetrician-Gynecologists' Practices Related to Hiv Testing

Patient Perception of Obstetrician-gynecologists' Practices Related to HIV Testing

1. What were the objectives and hypothesis of the study?

This paper examines the article "Patient Perception of Obstetrician-gynecologists' Practices Related to HIV Testing" Victoria et al (2009). The main objectives of this study were as follows (1) determine the percentage of obstetrician-gynecologists' patients who have been tested for HIV (2) examine patient attitudes about HIV testing and patients' knowledge about their own risk status (3) determine primary reasons patients decline to HIV testing and (4) learn patient recall of how their obstetrician-gynecologists approach the topic of HIV testing (Victoria et al 2009). There was no distinct hypothesis described by the author in the study.

2. What was the overall goal/recommendation of the study?

The overall goal of the study was to evaluate the overall perception of gynecologists and obstetricians regarding HIV testing. The study recommends that efforts should be made to enhance communication between obstetricians- gynecologists and patients regarding HIV testing and risk status.

3. State the specific study design that was implemented in this study?

The study design was approved by the IRB at Georgetown University in Washington D.C and consisted of mailing out surveys to all the participant obstetrician-gynecologists who were the members of the Collaborative Ambulatory Research Network (CARN) to be distributed and filled out by their patients. Along with the survey a questionnaire meant to be filled out by the physician were mailed out.

4. Describe what is a continuous variable and list at least 2 continuous variables used in the article.

A continuous variable in a study is a numeric value. The comparative degree of the values is significant. Some of the examples of continuous variables are blood pressure, height, respiration rate, heart rate etc. The two continuous variables in this study are the number of HIV tests performed on the patients and the current obstetrician and gynecologist's level of encouragement rating.

5. List the entire statistical test that were used in this study, giving a brief definition of each and classify each as either a multivariate or bivariate statistic.

One of the tests used in this study is the t- test. The t-test evaluates if the means of two groups are statistically unusual from the others. This analysis is suitable when comparing the means of two groups. The t- test is regarded as bi-variate statistics (Fischer et al 1987). The other test used in the study is the chi square test. The chi-square test is a statistical test generally employed to compare observed data with data that is expected out of a certain