A headline in a recent edition of USA Today stated, “Attending religious service

Question

A headline in a recent edition of USA Today stated, “Attending religious services lowers blood pressure more than tuning in to religious TV or radio, a new study shows.”

The study referred to was conducted by the U.S. National Institutes of Health. The study followed 2,391 people aged 65 or older for 6 years. The article described one of the study’s principal findings: “People who attended a religious service once a week and prayed or studied the Bible once a day were 40% less likely to have high blood pressure than those who don’t go to church every week and prayed and studied the Bible less.” The study reported a p-value of < 0.001 for the two-sample Z-test.

(a) Explain how you know this study is observational rather than experimental.

(b) A colleague is impressed with the tiny p-value and concludes that she should start attending her church more regularly because of her high blood pressure. Use the approach taken in the Inference and Design section to explain why she should not jump to this conclusion.

Explanation / Answer

(a)

This is an onservational study becuase reseacher did not give any treatmnet to subjects in the studies. Reasecher only observe the behaviour.

(b)

Since p-value is small so we reject the null hypothesis that People who attended a religious service once a week and prayed or studied the Bible once a day were not likely to have less high blood pressure than those who don’t go to church every week and prayed and studied the Bible less.

This result is only based upon the sample evidence and it may be possible it is due to chance only.

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