Does caffeine cause cancer? Is autism caused by childhood immunizations? What is the relationship between eating sugary sweets at night and weight gain? It is often helpful to determine and explore relationships between variables. This is especially important in health care, a field dedicated to providing quality care for patients and improving health outcomes. Examining relationships between variables forms the basis for correlational statistics.

In this Discussion, you identify a health care or nursing practice problem that can be explored with correlational statistics and formulate a research question for exploring that problem. You also develop a null and alternate hypothesis, determine the variables related to the study, and predict relationships between the variables based on what you know of correlational statistics.

To prepare:

• Review this week’s Learning Resources and the “Correlation” tutorial focusing on the types of research questions that can be answered using a correlational statistic.
• Brainstorm a number of health care delivery or nursing practice problems that could be explored using correlational statistics. Then, select one problem on which to focus for this Discussion.
• Formulate a research question to address the problem and that would lead you to employ correlational statistics.
• Develop a null hypothesis and alternate hypotheses.
• Ask yourself: What is the expected direction of the relationship?

BY DAY 3

Post a cohesive response that addresses the following:

• Identify your selected problem in the first line of your posting and post your research question.
• Post a null hypothesis and alternate hypotheses for your research question and identify the dependent and independent variables that would be associated with the research study.
• Provide your prediction for the expected relationship (positive or negative) between the variables. Why do you think that sort of relationship will exist? What other factors might affect the outcome?

IMPLEMENT SOMETHING FROM THESE REQUIRED READINGS:

REQUIRED READINGS

Gray, J.R., Grove, S.K., & Sutherland, S. (2017). Burns and Grove’s the practice of nursing research: Appraisal, synthesis, and generation of evidence (8th ed.). St. Louis, MO: Saunders Elsevier. Chapter 23, “Using Statistics to Examine Relationships”Chapter 23 explains how to use statistics to examine relationships between groups using correlational analyses, scatter diagrams, Spearman rank-order correlation coefficient, and Kendall’s tau.

Statistics and Data Analysis for Nursing Research Chapter 4, “Bivariate Description: Crosstabulation, Risk Indexes, and Correlation” (pp. 59–61 and 68–78)This chapter describes components of bivariate descriptive statistics, including crosstabulation, risk indexes, and correlation. The chapter also discusses the concepts of absolute risk, relative risk, odds ratio, and correlation matrices.
Chapter 9, “Correlation and Simple Regression” (pp. 197–209)This portion of Chapter 9 continues the discussion of inferential statistics and explores correlation and simple linear regression.

• Grid View

		Excellent	Good	Fair	Poor
Main Posting		45 (45%) – 50 (50%) Answers all parts of the discussion question(s) expectations with reflective critical analysis and synthesis of knowledge gained from the course readings for the module and current credible sources.   Supported by at least three current, credible sources.   Written clearly and concisely with no grammatical or spelling errors and fully adheres to current APA manual writing rules and style.	40 (40%) – 44 (44%) Responds to the discussion question(s) and is reflective with critical analysis and synthesis of knowledge gained from the course readings for the module.   At least 75% of post has exceptional depth and breadth.   Supported by at least three credible sources.   Written clearly and concisely with one or no grammatical or spelling errors and fully adheres to current APA manual writing rules and style.	35 (35%) – 39 (39%) Responds to some of the discussion question(s).   One or two criteria are not addressed or are superficially addressed.   Is somewhat lacking reflection and critical analysis and synthesis.   Somewhat represents knowledge gained from the course readings for the module.   Post is cited with two credible sources.   Written somewhat concisely; may contain more than two spelling or grammatical errors.   Contains some APA formatting errors.	0 (0%) – 34 (34%) Does not respond to the discussion question(s) adequately.   Lacks depth or superficially addresses criteria.   Lacks reflection and critical analysis and synthesis.   Does not represent knowledge gained from the course readings for the module.   Contains only one or no credible sources.   Not written clearly or concisely.   Contains more than two spelling or grammatical errors.   Does not adhere to current APA manual writing rules and style.
Main Post: Timeliness		10 (10%) – 10 (10%) Posts main post by day 3.	0 (0%) – 0 (0%)	0 (0%) – 0 (0%)	0 (0%) – 0 (0%) Does not post by day 3.
First Response		17 (17%) – 18 (18%) Response exhibits synthesis, critical thinking, and application to practice settings.   Responds fully to questions posed by faculty.   Provides clear, concise opinions and ideas that are supported by at least two scholarly sources.   Demonstrates synthesis and understanding of learning objectives.   Communication is professional and respectful to colleagues.   Responses to faculty questions are fully answered, if posed.   Response is effectively written in standard, edited English.	15 (15%) – 16 (16%) Response exhibits critical thinking and application to practice settings.   Communication is professional and respectful to colleagues.   Responses to faculty questions are answered, if posed.   Provides clear, concise opinions and ideas that are supported by two or more credible sources.   Response is effectively written in standard, edited English.	13 (13%) – 14 (14%) Response is on topic and may have some depth.   Responses posted in the discussion may lack effective professional communication.   Responses to faculty questions are somewhat answered, if posed.   Response may lack clear, concise opinions and ideas, and a few or no credible sources are cited.	0 (0%) – 12 (12%) Response may not be on topic and lacks depth.   Responses posted in the discussion lack effective professional communication.   Responses to faculty questions are missing.   No credible sources are cited.
Second Response		16 (16%) – 17 (17%) Response exhibits synthesis, critical thinking, and application to practice settings.   Responds fully to questions posed by faculty.   Provides clear, concise opinions and ideas that are supported by at least two scholarly sources.   Demonstrates synthesis and understanding of learning objectives.   Communication is professional and respectful to colleagues.   Responses to faculty questions are fully answered, if posed.   Response is effectively written in standard, edited English.	14 (14%) – 15 (15%) Response exhibits critical thinking and application to practice settings.   Communication is professional and respectful to colleagues.   Responses to faculty questions are answered, if posed.   Provides clear, concise opinions and ideas that are supported by two or more credible sources.   Response is effectively written in standard, edited English.	12 (12%) – 13 (13%) Response is on topic and may have some depth.   Responses posted in the discussion may lack effective professional communication.   Responses to faculty questions are somewhat answered, if posed.   Response may lack clear, concise opinions and ideas, and a few or no credible sources are cited.	0 (0%) – 11 (11%) Response may not be on topic and lacks depth.   Responses posted in the discussion lack effective professional communication.   Responses to faculty questions are missing.   No credible sources are cited.
Participation		5 (5%) – 5 (5%) Meets requirements for participation by posting on three different days.	0 (0%) – 0 (0%)	0 (0%) – 0 (0%)	0 (0%) – 0 (0%) Does not meet requirements for participation by posting on 3 different days.
Total Points: 100