Question

Use Excel or other statistics application program for the following two problems.

1.      Physician burnout is a serious problem and you have the impression that morale among the physicians at your facility is at a low point. You administer a survey to get some quantitative data, as well as some suggestions for improvement. One of the most common suggestions is that hiring physician extenders (PAs, scribes, or other extenders) would improve things. Your supervisor gives you permission to hire some physician extenders, but wants to know if the investment achieves significant results. You decide to administer a second survey six months following the hiring of physician extenders and will do a t-test to see if there’s a significant change in the survey results compared to the results from the survey prior to the hiring.

Here is the data, from the two surveys:

Physician number	Survey #1 average score (out of 10)	Survey #2 average score (out of 10)
01	7.2	7.5
02	6.5	6.7
03	5.5	4.8
04	5.5	6.4
05	6.8	7.4
06	8.0	9.0
07	8.3	7.8
08	4.3	5.5
09	7.1	8.0
10	6.6	7.1
11	4.5	5.0
12	7.9	7.4
13	4.6	5.3
14	6.5	6.0
15	5.8	6.5

[Hint: This is an example of using a paired samples (repeated samples) t-test. In Excel, the “type” parameter for the paired samples t-test is ‘1’. Since we don’t know if the new hiring will improve or worsen the survey results (you never know … the new hires could make things more difficult), this will be a two-tailed t-test. The “tails” parameter in Excel is ‘2’.]

a.       Using Excel, determine whether there has been a significant change in the survey results. Copy and paste your Excel data and result. (Just copy and paste the portion of the Excel page that has your work on it; do not copy and paste the entire Excel page … they’re huge!) (10)

b.      What is your conclusion about the effect of hiring physician extenders? (5)

Answer 1

a)

t-Test: Paired Two Sample for Means
	Variable 1	Variable 2
Mean	6.34	6.693333333
Variance	1.639714286	1.46352381
Observations	15	15
Pearson Correlation	0.87718221
Hypothesized Mean Difference	0
df	14
t Stat	-2.203964717
P(T<=t) one-tail	0.022383147
t Critical one-tail	1.761310136
P(T<=t) two-tail	0.044766293
t Critical two-tail	2.144786688

This is output of the test.

From this test we can say that there is no significant change in the survey results.

(Path to test t test in excel :- Data-Data Analysis-t test:paired two samples for mean-variable1-give range of 1st survey in excel sheet-variable 2- give the range of 2nd survey in excel sheet- output range-ok.)

b) Here, Hypothesis are,

H₀ : There is no significant difference in the survey result

vrs

H₁ : There is significant difference in the survey result

From above t-test we can see that, t value is less than t-critical value(0.0447 < 2.1447) hence we accept the null hypothesis.

Hence, there is no significant difference in the survey result. Hence, there is no effect of hiring physician extenders.