I think this because the higher standard of living associated with More Economically Developed countries usually means that the population have better health care, have more national services and have better health care thus leading to a longer life expectancy, higher BMI and higher GNP. How I am going to carry out the Investigation A) The data needed for this investigation is the data from 30 different countries.
I need to collect each countries average BMI, GNP and life expectancy. To make sure that this investigation is fair, I need to take results from MEDCs (more economically developed countries) and LEDCs (less economically developed countries) this will improve my investigation because it will produce a wider spread of results. I have chosen to investigate 30 countries as this will mean that I can do an even number of MEDCs and LEDCs.
B) The method of collect of my investigation will be secondary data from the Internet. I am using secondary data as it is impossible to send questionnaires out to 30 different countries. Also, the questionnaires might not go to a range of people, which would lead to an unfair result. By using secondary data, I can make sure that I get a fair range of data from the website. C) My sources of secondary data will be the World Health Organisation and the Royal Society of Medicine. I have chosen to find my data from these sources, as I believe that they will produce the most accurate results.
D) I am going to choose my data by selection. I will take 6 countries from each of the 5 World areas (such as Europe). To make my selections I am going to look at the average GNP as this is the set of data with the widest range of results and can show me which countries are MED or LED. Within this collection I shall get a range of the different GNPs for example I will choose countries with high GNPs, average GNPs and low GNPs. This, I feel, will give me the most accurate results as I will be using a range of data and no particular world area will have advantage over the others by only choosing countries with higher GNPs.
My Data My data shows the country, average BMI, average life expectancy and average GNP. When looking for data on BMI, I could not find any on the Royal Society of Medicine’s website so I contacted their Search services. With this investigation is a copy of the email that I sent to them and their reply from Emma Shaw, the Royal Society of Medicine’s Search Assistant. Analysis of the Data Graph 1: Average Life Expectancy To show my results for Average Life Expectancy, (one of my three factors that I am researching) I have used the statistical computer programme, Autograph 3. To clearly show my results I have used a cumulative frequency diagram, a histogram and a box and whisker diagram. I have used a cumulative frequency graph to show the trend of growth of my continuous data. It is useful for estimating how much more or less there is of a certain amount, and keeps a running total of the amount of values.
Histograms are summary graphs that show a count of data points falling in various ranges. The effect of this is a rough approximation of the frequency distribution of the data. I have used box and whisker diagrams because they are useful for showing median and upper and lower quartiles. They are also useful in seeing any outliners or anomalous results. I have also used stem and leaf diagrams to show my initial data as it is a clear was of representing data, where results are very easy to pick out and read off. From my results, I can see that there is a very strong link between Average GNP and Average Life Expectancy.
This supports my hypothesis and I would expect this because a higher GNP means that the country has more money to spend on services such as hospitals and doctors for its population, which leads to better health care and a longer life expectancy. A good example of this is Switzerland with the highest average GNP and one of the longest life expectancies. The only anomalous result that I had was Japan who the largest Life Expectancy which suggests that the health care and standard of living in Japan is very good.
N.B Point on Standard Deviation when calculated some of the calculations showed xE+E or for example 5.06E+05. This is the calculator’s way of doing and simplifying Standard Form, 5.06E+05 means 5.06 x 10 ^ (+05) or 5.06 x 10^5 or five hundred and six thousand 506,000 Summary and Conclusion of Data What does my data show: I have found this investigation very interesting and it has been interesting to look at different sets of data plotted against each other.
I believe that my data has shown my hypothesis with the MDEDS having much longer life expectancies, BMIs and GNPs than LEDCs. My results have proven that, on average, countries with higher GNPs live longer and have higher BMIs. I reasons for my results are that MEDCs have better standards of living with food readily available and good health services. MEDCs also have good with better values, which improves wages and standard of living. Limitations of my work: I felt that within my investigation there were several limitations: The size of the populations may have made the investigation unfair as a larger population would have brought the average life expectancy up as there was more people to measure the ages of.
The data that I used was collected in 1998. This was several years ago and average BMI’s, Life expectancies and average GNPs would have changed, meaning that my data and research is not valid, as new data has been found. Also, the World Health Orgainsation only had all of my relevant data for certain countries so I did not have many countries to choose from which may have limited my results. I also felt that I would have gotten better results if I had more time to investigate more countries, as it would have made a better comparison. However, I am pleased with the amount of countries that I have investigated in this investigation.
Points for further work: I have two possible sets of inter- related hypothesis that I could suggest for further work. 1. Does the geographically position of the country affect the BMI of the population? Does the geographically position affect the GNP of a country? Does the average GNP affect the infant mortality rate? Does the average BMI affect the average infant morality rate? 2. Does the average life expectancy affect the average number of children per household? Does the average GNP affect the number of children per household? Does the average BMI affect the number of children per household?
