Position Paper 1: Assignment Overview
Gapminder World (http://www.gapminder.org/world/ is a web-service displaying time series of
development statistics for all countries and many sub-national regions. You can use this site to access a wide range of statistics regarding the health and wealth of nations, spanning decades or even centuries.
Health economics is a sub-category under the larger category of health, and enumerates summary statistics regarding health spending in every country in the world.
The site allows the association between two parameters to be compared in graphical form, on an x-y access graph. You can also access the raw numbers that are used to generate the graphs.
You should select individual countries or groups of countries of interest to you, and look at trends in health care spending either over time, or as related to other parameters such as life expectancy, average annual income, childhood mortality, or any one of the hundreds of other options available on the site. For example, educational parameters, employment numbers, environmental factors, and general productivity measures are often linked to health spending and health outcomes, but the relationships will vary depending on the country.
Pay attention to the scales on the x and y axes. You can choose between linear and log scales. Switching between the two will reveal striking disparities in a single parameter across countries (for example, 2 – 3 orders of magnitude for health spending per person, revealed on a linear scale), yet a nearly linear relationship between two parameters (for example average income and annual health expenditures per person) if expressed on a log scale.
Considering the wealth of data on the site, there are innumerable take-home messages from doing such comparisons, and many if not most are dependent upon your insight and creativity in using the site. There are no right or wrong approaches here.
Format for Paper
This assignment is analysis of quantitative data. The submission should clearly capture the quantitative nature of the material. Your submission should consist of the following sections:
- Synopsis/abstract of your submission. This should be one short paragraph.
- Introduction and background. Clearly state the parameters and country/countries you are investigating, and why they are of interest to you. Ideally, you would propose one or more hypotheses to test, based on your initial intuition or background reading.
- This is the main substance of the assignment. You need not illustrate all of the figures or tables you use in your analysis, but somewhere in the narrative (perhaps in table form) you should describe your approach. Downloading/copying figures from Gapminder World is logical and acceptable, but for complex graphs, you should make sure that labels are included to illustrate specific points. Similarly, all graphs should have legends.
- Summary and Conclusion. Summarize your findings, and interpret them in the context of your introduction and background section and hypotheses.
The length of the submission depends primarily on the extent to which graphs, tables and other supplemental material are used. The narrative portion alone should be between 2 and 3 pages.
Evaluation Criteria and Grading Rubric
This assignment will be evaluated on formulation (30%), analysis (30%), interpretation (20%), and mechanics (i.e., spelling, grammar, quantity, and timeliness) (20%). See below for the rubric guidelines.
| Criterion | 90-100% (36-40 points) | 70-90% (28-35 points) Credit | <70% (<28 points) |
| Formulation (30%) | Clear and logical statement of question/hypothesis to be addressed, with supporting material to justify validity of topic | Clear and logical statement of question/hypothesis to be addressed | Ambiguous and/or illogical statement of question/ hypothesis to be addressed |
| Analysis (30%) | Complete analysis of data from Gapminder World site related to question/ hypothesis posed with additional supporting data from other sources, and/or de novo generation of graphs and tables to illustrate findings | Complete analysis of data from Gapminder World site related to question/ hypothesis posed | Incomplete analysis of data from Gapminder World site |
| Interpretation (20%) | Cogent interpretation of results, in context of question/hypothesis posed, with suggestions as to additional data that would further inform the analysis | Cogent interpretation of results, in context of question/hypothesis posed | Response limited to describing data, without additional interpretation |
| Mechanics (20%) | Spelling and grammatical errors are minimal. Organization of ideas is clear and sources are cited where appropriate. Communication is very professional and polished. Graphs, tables and/or other supplemental material illustrate points clearly, are cited in the text, and have explanatory legends | There are a number of spelling and grammatical errors. Organization of ideas is fairly clear and usually sources are cited where appropriate. Communication is fairly professional and polished. Graphs, tables and/or other supplemental material are included. | There are a significant number of spelling and grammatical errors. Organization of ideas is unclear and sources are not cited where appropriate. Communication is not professional and polished. No use of graphs, tables and/or other supplemental material. |
