Navigating Ethical Dilemmas in Statistics: Regression Analysis for Sensitive Questions

Abstract

Course name Instructor’s name Assignment due date Module 6 Discussion Question: Ethics and Statistics Statistics involving sensitive questions where wrong decisions incur risk require a high level of certainty when making conclusions. In such cases, statisticians have to ensure that they choose their analysis methods carefully to reduce the risk of making wrong decisions. In fields such as medicine and economics, wrong conclusions could lead to significant losses for the users of data in statistics. According to Gelman & Madigan (2015), regression performed properly can be used to answer sensitive questions even when the cost for a wrong decision are high. In particular, I think that using regression properly can provide accurate solutions to sensitive questions in statistics. Ethical considerations would require that the method of analysis be performed carefully to avoid the generalization of wrong conclusions to sensitive questions. For instance, it is essential to ensure that all assumptions made during the regression process and when making conclusions are based on accurate information and facts. When using regression to answer sensitive questions, it is important that the bar is set high to avoid wrong decisions. The correlation between the dependent and independent variables should be as higher than 0.7 or lower than -0.7 to conclude that there exist a relationship. When preparing a sample, it is important to ensure that it is sufficient to match the sensitive nature of the case. Statistics does not provide certainty when making decisions involving sensitive questions but it reduces the probability of making the wrong decisions (Gelman & Madigan, 2015). Even with a high correlation and a large sample, there still exist a small probability that statiscians will make the wrong decisions when analyzing data. Setting sufficient parameters reduces the risk of such...