Question

+) If depression after CABG surgery were a benign condition, it might not be particularly important to detect. For example, if the presence of depression was only associated with the type of toothpaste you selected the next day, the toothpaste company might want to fund the study but the National Institute of Health probably would not. Therefore, to strengthen the argument that depression in women after CABG surgery is an important issue to address the nurse researchers need to support that the outcomes associated with the presence of depression are significant. How is statistics used to do this?

Answer 1

A cross-sectional study can be planned on CABG patients and depression score of a standardised depression scale like beck depression inventory can be employed in addition to other demographic or other factors. Differences in characteristics between participants with and without current depression can be compared using a standard 2-tailed t test for continuous variables and a χ2 test for dichotomous variables. With the help of logistic regression, association between current depression and other factors can be ruled out.