RECENT ASSIGNMENT

Skills for Professional Practice for Bioscience 2 (MMC923627)
2016/17
EDA Poster Coursework (BIO)
Issue date Friday, 3rd March 2017
Submission date On or before 2 pm Friday, 14th April 2017
An electronic copy of the poster AND your sampled SPSS data are required to be submitted by email to the EDA lecturer at simondocuments@gmail.com.
Your poster AND data filename must include SPPB2 in front of your initial.
For an average well-prepared student, this Coursework should take about 15 to 20 hours. This figure assumes adequate preparation and the undertaking of the formative work offered within the EDA element. This poster coursework counts 50% towards your final SPPB2 module mark.
LATE SUBMISSION AFTER THE SPECIFIED DEADLINE FOR NO REASON OR DUE TO AN UNACCEPTABLE REASON WILL BE CONSIDERED AS A NON-SUBMISSION.
Dr Simon Jeon, Room A020 (Govan Mbeki Building)
?: 0141-274-1685, ?: sje1@gcu.ac.uk
This Coursework is an individually-based assignment whereby you submit your OWN work for assessment.
Plagiarism is a serious offence and you should ensure that your Coursework submission is your own and not work copied from others. Sources of information on plagiarism are available on the student web site (see Improve your coursework on the Student Home page). If evidence of plagiarism is detected, affected Courseworks may not be marked and may be subject to appropriate disciplinary action (see University Assessment Regulations).
In any field of academic study, collaboration with others is an important part of the learning process, and the sharing of understanding and the assistance with difficulties is often helpful. However, you should not collaborate when writing out a piece of open assessed work or copy the work of another student or allow another student to copy your work or ask someone else to undertake your work for you. This constitutes collusion. If in doubt as to whether to give assistance to another student, ask the Module Leader, Mrs Frances MacInnes, for guidance as to what is and what is not permissible. When drawing on previous work done by others, you must acknowledge it using appropriate referencing. Your submission must be written in a suitable writing style which includes proper structure, proper citing of output information and proper use of references. The Improve your coursework site available from the Student Home page (www.gcu.ac.uk/student/coursework) has useful guides and handy hints about report presentations. See also the examples in accompanying EDA component.
This Coursework will be conducted in accordance with the University Regulations regarding “Failure to Submit Coursework”. To this end, it requires to be submitted on or before the indicated submission date. Failure to do so, without valid reason, will result in your submission being considered as a nonsubmission. Extensions to the submission date may be granted if you are unable, with good reason, to submit the Coursework by the deadline. This will only occur in exceptional circumstances and through prior arrangement with the Module Leader. If you believe that circumstances beyond your control have affected your performance in this Coursework or you have missed the submission deadline with what you consider good cause, you should submit a “Mitigating Circumstances Form” (MCF) with necessary supporting documentation, e.g., medical certificate. An electronic copy of the MCF is available from the Student Home Page (go to Exams Dates and Guide ? Mitigating Circumstances) while paper copies can be obtained from The Base in the Saltire Centre or the Examinations Office (M122A).
Remember to make back-up copies of all Coursework-related work.
Dr. Simon Jeon, EDA Lecturer
A Brief Synopsis of a Study
A group of physicians published the results of a study (Shepherd et al., 1995)* investigating the effect of statins in men (n = 6595), 45 to 64 years of age, with high cholesterol. Their baseline lowdensity lipoprotein (LDL) levels were measured (in milligram/decilitre) before they were randomly assigned to either the statin group or the placebo group. After an average of five year follow-up with the corresponding treatments, their LDL levels were measured again. A simulated subset of the original study (n = 100, equally divided to each group, i.e., 50 in each group) was sampled and entered as follows in SPSS.
? Baseline LDL (Baseline): low-density lipoprotein measurement (LDL, in milligram/decilitre).
? LDL measured after five years of follow-up with respect to the group assignment (Followup): low-density lipoprotein measurement (LDL, in milligram/decilitre).
? Coding variable (Group): The value of 1 represents placebo group whereas the value of 2 represents the statin group.
The Objectives for Poster
The main objective of your poster is to conduct appropriate statistical analyses for the following objectives and provide your critical interpretation of the results of the analyses. For all the objectives, you are required to use approximately 50% of randomly sampled data with Mersenne Twister algorithm using your student ID as a random seed.
In addition, you need to provide background information leading to the purpose/aim of the study, based on your reading the scientific journals relevant to the study introduced here, in your introduction including, but not limited to, the following: What have others done before the study? What relevance does the current study have with the previous studies? Why was the study conducted as they were? What’s the main purpose of the study?
Your method section of the poster can be just a brief summary of the method section of the study as you have not conducted the study yourself. Identify the design component or the mode of data collection where applicable based on what you learned from EDA.
Your result section is the main part of the poster. Be sure to identify a proper statistical analysis and check the respective statistical assumptions. It may take for you to rearrange the data in order to fit the statistical analysis of interest depending upon the objective. Report your statistical results in the proper format. Note that the data used here are simulated, meaning they are not the real data. Moreover, you will use only part of the data for your individual analysis. Therefore, your results will all be different from students to students. Do not be alarmed when you find different results than the original study! It is not your goal to replicate the results of the original study. Be honest with your data and the respective results.
Your conclusion/discussion section should summarise your findings in more plain language. Tie your statistical results back to the original research question – What do the results tell you in the end? Are the original hypotheses/research questions supported/answered? What bearings do your results have? Any previous studies disagreeing with your results? If so, then what is your thinking on why there is difference? Did you find any other studies supporting or similar to your results? Your suggestions for the future study with a rough prediction?
Analysis Objective 1
Assess and discuss if there is a difference in the mean baseline LDL between the group assigned to placebo and statin group BEFORE they are treated with corresponding treatment.
Analysis Objective 2
Analyse and discuss if there is an evidence of difference in the mean LDL of the group treated with placebo BEFORE AND AFTER they are treated.
Analysis Objective 3
Perform and discuss if there is an evidence of difference in the mean LDL of the group treated with statin BEFORE AND AFTER they are treated?
Analysis Objective 4
Evaluate and discuss if there is an evidence of difference in their mean treated LDL between the groups treated with placebo and statin AFTER they are treated for five years.
As there are multiple comparisons to make, conduct all the necessary inferential analyses for the objectives at the Bonferonni corrected significance level. This rule is not applicable to the assumption checks. For the assumptions check, use the usual a = .05.
Study Data
The study data are available from the GCULearn module site (Assignments ? EDA Poster Coursework). They are provided in a SPSS data file called SPPB2trimB1617posterData.SPV. Store a copy of this file on a backup storage device (USB flash drive) and/or your own University workspace (H: drive) and/or PC/Laptop hard drive.
*The Original Study
The West of Scotland Coronary Prevention Study Group (1995). Prevention of coronary heart disease with pravastatin in men with hypercholesterolemia. The New England Journal of Medicine, 20(16):1301-1307.
Poster Marking Information
Your poster should be made with either of the following; Microsoft Powerpoint/Publisher. Your poster should be saved as their default file formats or portable document format (.pdf) for electronic submission. No other format will be allowed for submission. Figures, Graphs, outputs, and tables should be sequentially numbered, titled in your text and cited accordingly in your poster.
Abstract
Briefly outline problem area and summary of outcome results (max 100 words). 5
Total: 5 marks
Introduction
Background to problem. Link to at least five relevant references. 10
Clearly stated study purpose or hypotheses 5
Total: 15 marks
Methods
A brief description of methods/apparatus/design component/procedures used 5
Total: 5 Marks
Results: Analyses of Objectives
Use of correct data and generation of relevant SPSS output, suitably edited where appropriate. 4
Adequate presentation of exploratory analysis and report of descriptive statistics. 10
Correct assumption check(s) and report of the results. 10 Correct choice of inferential analysis and adequate report of the results. 16
Total: 40 marks
Conclusion/Discussion
Summarise the findings and provide a conclusion with respect to the original research question
using simple, non-statistical language. 5 Discuss the outcomes linking to referenced sources, where appropriate. 5
Provide future research ideas with predictions 5
Total: 15 marks
Presentation
Structured. Logical flow of analysis and arguments. 5 Use and citing of references* in text. Citing style correct. Proper citing. Correct style of references 5 Sequential numbering of figures and tables. Consistent layouts and appropriate labeling and units. 5
Spell checked (no US spelling). Acceptable grammar. Evidence of proof reading. 5
Total: 20 marks
TOTAL 100 marks
* For referencing, you should use the Harvard System (Author Date method). See also Improve your coursework on the Student Home page for further advice.
END OF COURSEWORK INSTRUCTION