Helping Students Understand Health Statistics

Mathematical and statistical information is often presented to patients after receiving health care. Previous research would suggest that people often have difficulty understanding statistical information, especially when it is presented in a single event probability format. According to previous research, the difficulty arises from numerical literacy, presentation format and an interaction of both. The goal of the current study is to determine the accuracy of students’ estimates of having an STD, after receiving a positive test result in a simulated clinical setting. Three different formats were manipulated to help students understand the statistical information frequencies, single event probability, and an icon array. Contrary to previous research, a three step hierarchical logistic regression determined that none of the formats were aiding in the accuracy of students’ estimates of having chlamydia. In fact, very few students estimated the correct likelihood they had an STD after receiving a positive test result. Possible limitations and future research are discussed

International Coercion, Emulation and Policy Diffusion: Market-Oriented Infrastructure Reforms, 1977-1999

Why do some countries adopt market-oriented reforms such as deregulation, privatization and liberalization of competition in their infrastructure industries while others do not? Why did the pace of adoption accelerate in the 1990s? Building on neo-institutional theory in sociology, we argue that the domestic adoption of market-oriented reforms is strongly influenced by international pressures of coercion and emulation. We find robust support for these arguments with an event-history analysis of the determinants of reform in the telecommunications and electricity sectors of as many as 205 countries and territories between 1977 and 1999. Our results also suggest that the coercive effect of multilateral lending from the IMF, the World Bank or Regional Development Banks is increasing over time, a finding that is consistent with anecdotal evidence that multilateral organizations have broadened the scope of the “conditionality” terms specifying market-oriented reforms imposed on borrowing countries. We discuss the possibility that, by pressuring countries into policy reform, cross-national coercion and emulation may not produce ideal outcomes.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/40099/3/wp713.pd