Introduction
In the wake of the recent lead poisoning incident in Flint Michigan, I chose to evaluate the case-controlled study, “Lead Levels Among Children Who Live in Public Housing”. According this study, lead exposure typically occurs in public housing or housing built before 1950. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimated that millions of children, per year, are exposed to lead. Side effects of the exposure include, but are not limited to: speech and hearing problems, slowed growth, behavioral problems and a host of other long term (poor) health conditions. Investigators in the study hypothesized that, “Children with elevated blood lead levels are less likely to reside in public housing developments than in nondevelopment …show more content…
This selection process eliminated the opportunity for biases to occur if more information about the participant or research(ers) were available. Furthermore, of the 7,121 children, 3,456 were female and 3,614 were male; while majority of participants were Black. I do believe the demographics investigators studied were appropriate; however, the amount of public housing developments (1574) studied compared to nonpublic housing (5547) seemed inappropriate. In my opinion this unbalance would cause results to be inaccurate, which also favors the hypothesis. However, the description of the population was as accurate as possible; given that all information a from a secondary source. Confounding Although I found bias in the selection process, investigators did seek to control confounding by eliminating any child who address could not be located by MapInfo® Corporation’s MapMarker or by the U.S. Census Bureau’s Census Tract Street Locator (SOURCE). This ensured that all participants were of either public housing or undeveloped housing in New Orleans. Additional confounding efforts included: the elimination of the lowest test result and the inclusion of age in sex in the
In the wake of the recent lead poisoning incident in Flint Michigan, I chose to evaluate the case-controlled study, “Lead Levels Among Children Who Live in Public Housing”. According this study, lead exposure typically occurs in public housing or housing built before 1950. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimated that millions of children, per year, are exposed to lead. Side effects of the exposure include, but are not limited to: speech and hearing problems, slowed growth, behavioral problems and a host of other long term (poor) health conditions. Investigators in the study hypothesized that, “Children with elevated blood lead levels are less likely to reside in public housing developments than in nondevelopment …show more content…
This selection process eliminated the opportunity for biases to occur if more information about the participant or research(ers) were available. Furthermore, of the 7,121 children, 3,456 were female and 3,614 were male; while majority of participants were Black. I do believe the demographics investigators studied were appropriate; however, the amount of public housing developments (1574) studied compared to nonpublic housing (5547) seemed inappropriate. In my opinion this unbalance would cause results to be inaccurate, which also favors the hypothesis. However, the description of the population was as accurate as possible; given that all information a from a secondary source. Confounding Although I found bias in the selection process, investigators did seek to control confounding by eliminating any child who address could not be located by MapInfo® Corporation’s MapMarker or by the U.S. Census Bureau’s Census Tract Street Locator (SOURCE). This ensured that all participants were of either public housing or undeveloped housing in New Orleans. Additional confounding efforts included: the elimination of the lowest test result and the inclusion of age in sex in the