It is common wisdom that death of a spouse can lead to health deterioration of t

Question

It is common wisdom that death of a spouse can lead to health deterioration of the partner left behind. Is common wisdom right or wrong in this case? To investigate, Maddison and Viola (1968) measured the degree of health deterioration of 132 widows in the Boston area, all of whose husbands had died at the age of 45-60 within a fixed six-month period before the study. A total of 28 of the 132 widows had experienced a marked deterioration in health, 47 had seen a moderate deterioration, and 57 had seen no deterioration in health. Of 98 control women with similar characteristics who had not lost their husbands, 7 saw a marked deterioration in health over the same time period, 31 experienced a moderate deterioration of health, and 60 saw no deterioration.

a) Give the contingency table of this data.

b) Test, using ?=0.05, whether the pattern of health deterioration was different between the two groups of women. (Note: To get full mark, one need to write down all the steps for hypothesis testing rather than copy paste the R output.)

Explanation / Answer

H0: wife's health on an average is the same between two groups

Ha The two groups are different.

Two way chi square test.

Two-way Contingency Table

?2 = 11.177,     df = 2,     ?2/df = 5.59 ,         P(?2 > 11.177) = 0.0037

expected values are displayed in italics
individual ?2values are displayed in (parentheses)

As p value <0.05 reject null hypothesis.

The pattern of health deterioration was different between the two groups of women.

Health deterioation of wife after husband death
marked det moderate no deterioation 28
20.09
( 3.12) 47
44.77
( 0.11) 57
67.15
( 1.53) 132 7
14.91
( 4.20) 31
33.23
( 0.15) 60
49.85
( 2.07) 98 35 78 117 230

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