You are investigating the role of physical activity in heart disease, and your data suggest a protective effect. Whilepresenting your findings, a colleague asks whether you have thought about confounders, such as factor. Under which ofthe following conditions could this factor have confounded your interpretation of the data? a. It is a risk factor for some other disease, but not heart disease. b. It is a risk factor associated with the physical activity measure and heart disease. c. It is part of the causal pathway by which physical activity affects heart disease. d. It has caused a lack of follow-up of test subjects. e. It may have blinded your study.

Question

Houston Rosales

Biology

12 February, 18:28

You are investigating the role of physical activity in heart disease, and your data suggest a protective effect. Whilepresenting your findings, a colleague asks whether you have thought about confounders, such as factor. Under which ofthe following conditions could this factor have confounded your interpretation of the data? a. It is a risk factor for some other disease, but not heart disease. b. It is a risk factor associated with the physical activity measure and heart disease. c. It is part of the causal pathway by which physical activity affects heart disease. d. It has caused a lack of follow-up of test subjects. e. It may have blinded your study.

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Answers (1)

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Arianna Rojas · Answer 1

Answer: option E - It may have blinded your study.

Explanation:

A confounder is a factor, in data analysis, that causes the effects of two distinct processes to be indistinguishable / unknown.

Of course, the confounder (factor) could have made the protective effect against heart disease a function of more than just physical activity - bringing other factors like heredity or diet history etc into consideration.

So, the confounder (factor) may have blinded your study.