Question

Please type correct answer A pharmaceutical company conducts a study to evaluate the relationship between length of time taking drug X and size of tumor. They enlist 2,400 patients with the same type of benign tumor who have been on drug X for varying lengths of time (measured in days). They find that the longer the patient is on the drug, the smaller the patient’s tumor size (measured in volume). In fact, they report the results as r(2398) = -.21, with significance of p < .0001. What is your initial perception of this information? What are other ways, beyond looking at the p-value alone, you could use to try to interpret what this outcome of r(2398) = -.21 tells us about the relationship between length of time taking drug X and the size of the tumor?

Answer 1

Initial percetion of this information is that the p value suggests that result is significant, which means longer the patient is on the drug, the smaller the patient's tumor size. This is also suggested by the coefficient of correlation (r) value which is negative

We can also interpret the given data using the coefficient of correlation (r) which is equal to -0.21, this shows that there is weak negative relationship between the patient time on the drug and patient's tumor size. This means the patient's tumor size gets reduced whenever the drug time for the patient is increased.