Practical Activity: Memorex efficacy

Practical Activity: Memorex efficacy
A prestigious pharmaceutical company asks you to analyze the efficacy of their medicine
“Memorex”. This medicine is to improve memory capacity in the elderly.
A clinical trial has been designed consisting of giving Memorex to a group of people over
60 years of age, and will be assessed if they have had any improvement at the end of
the experiment. The efficacy of the drug is measured through a test that the participants
in the experiment perform at the beginning and end of treatment. The test consists of a
questionnaire that scores 0 (total absence of memory) and 100 (perfect memory).
For the analysis, you have a sample made up of a total of N = 120 randomly selected
adults. Half of the sample, n = 60, are given Memorex (treatment group). The other half
receives a placebo (control group). The database for the statistical analysis contains the
following variables:
Points: difference of points in the test carried out at the end and at the beginning of the
experiment (dependent variable or endogenous variable). A negative value means that
the individual has worsened his ability to memorize, a positive value, that it has
improved it and 0 when there is no change.
Group: binary variable that takes a value of 1 if the individual belongs to the treatment
group (receives the treatment) and 0 for the control group (receives the placebo).
Sex: binary variable that takes value 1 for woman and 0 for men.
Age: age in years.
Nstudies: categorical variable that represents the level of studies reached (4 categories),
1 without studies, 2 primary studies, 3 secondary studies, and 4 higher studies.Master in Health Economics and Pharmacoeocnomics
Course 2 – Practical Activity
2
1. Perform a basic analysis of the available variables numerically (using frequency
tables and descriptive statistics) and graphically (histograms and bar graphs).
In Excel there is a tool known as “Descriptive Statistics” useful for generating a simple
statistical summary of data. It is accessed within the “Data” tab by selecting the section
labeled Data Analysis. For this tool to appear, you must have the Data Analysis plug-in