RESEARCH PROJECT
COFFEE USE - HEART RATE
Part 1 The study used for this project is a nursing and health sciences study. One particular healthcare facility is trying to determine if it is a good idea to provide coffee in the waiting room for the patients. There are several other facilities that serve tea, coffee, and water, so this health care facility wants to determine if there is sufficient evidence to show that coffee increases the patient heart rates.
The question that I as a researcher want to answer is whether ingesting coffee, increases ones heart rate. The independent variable of this study is Coffee, and the dependent variable in this study is Heart Rate. The confounding or lurking variables in this study are the amount of coffee consumed, what patients ate prior to providing sample, age of patients, diet of patients, existing medical conditions of patients, and the exercise regimen of the patients. Other confounding variables could be the amount of tobacco and alcohol use, and possible white coat syndrome. The type of data is quantitative, and it is measured at the interval level, numeric data with no natural zero point; intervals (differences) are meaningful but ratios are not. The sample for this study is 15 patients from a local health care facility waiting room. The population of the study is patients from the waiting rooms of all health care facilities in the state. The population is normally distributed before drinking coffee; because it has an even amount of data on either side of the mean. The population is slightly skewed to the right after drinking coffee, with more data to the right of mean; which does indicate increased heart rate after drinking coffee. This will be an observational study, due to the fact that we will be observing the effect of coffee on patient heart rates.
Findings of Data Heart Rates Before Coffee | Heart Rates After Coffee | 60 | 65 | 60 | 65 | 65 | 72 | 70 | 80 | 75 | 79
References: Triola, M. F. (2010). Elementary statistics (11th ed.). Boston: MA: Pearson Education .