Monday, January 25, 2016

Decoding the Code books


As part of a Data Analysis & Interpretation Course, I had to zero on a Code book to further explore data deep into a relation between associates.

Two out of the 5 Code books caught my interest. The two are : 

1) One year data of numerous country-level indicators of health, wealth and development : This Code books is by GapMinder, a non-profit venture promoting sustainable global development and achievement of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals. GapMinder collects data from a handful of sources, including the Institute  for Health Metrics and Evaluation, US Census Bureau’s International Database,  United Nations Statistics Division, and  the World Bank. 

And the Second one, 

2) Data from survey related to Political and Social Attitudes from a popular country : The 2012 Outlook Surveys, conducted by GfK Knowledge Networks on behalf of the University of California Irvine, were designed to study political and social attitudes in the United States. The project included two surveys fielded between August and December 2012 using a sample from an Internet panel.

After looking through the codebook of the GapMinder, I have decided that I am particularly interested in breastcancer and I would like to explore further if BreastCancer, the Female employ rate and alcohol consumption are anywhere associated in increasing cases of Breast Cancer from the dataset provided. 

My Research Question:
Are Employ rate in women & alcohol consumption increasing causes for Breast Cancer in women ?

Hypothesis:
Psychological Stress in the Workplace leads to higher chances of Breast Cancer in Women

While breast cancer dependence is a good starting point, I need to determine what it is about breast cancer and employrate that I am interested in. Going through the wikipedia, I found out that,  Worldwide, breast cancer is the leading type of cancer in women, accounting for 25% of all cases which I consider to be huge.  In 2012 it resulted in 1.68 million cases and 522,000 deaths. It is more common in developed countries and is more than 100 times more common in women than in men.

I decide that I am most interested in exploring the association between alcohol consumption, employ rate and breast cancer. With some exploration over the internet, I could find few resources and published articles which are researched on Job Stress and Breast Cancer and as well the Alcohol consumption and risk of Breast Cancer. Although, the Job stress is not mentioned as the Risk factors, but growing stress levels might be associated to changes in the body and that thought led me to make a thorough search towards the Job Stress & Breast Cancer link.

The following are the reference articles, I am currently looking at to find more information :

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breast_cancer  : gives me an overview on what actually is Breast Cancer and few stats
http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=373223 : A Meta-analysis of Alcohol Consumption in Relation to Risk of Breast Cancer
http://aje.oxfordjournals.org/content/160/11/1079.short : Job Stress and Breast Cancer Risk
http://journals.lww.com/epidem/Abstract/2001/01000/Increased_Breast_Cancer_Risk_among_Women_Who_Work.13.aspx : Increased Breast Cancer Risk among Women Who Work Predominantly at Night
http://aje.oxfordjournals.org/content/149/2/127.short : Psychological Stress in the Workplace and Menstrual Function

This is from a preliminary exploration that had gone through and more inputs would continue to flow in as I make progress.

Comments are definitely welcome.!!