The paper “From Dr. Kildare to Grey’s Anatomy” (Annals of Emergency Medicine [2010]: 21A– 23A) describes several studies of how the way in which doctors are portrayed on television might influence public perception of doctors. One study was described as follows: Rebecca Chory, Ph. D., now an associate professor of communication at West Virginia University, began studying the effect of such portrayals on patients’ attitudes toward physicians. Using a survey of 300 undergraduate students, she compared perceptions of physicians in 1992— the end of the era when physicians were shown as all- knowing, wise father figures— with those in 1999, when shows such as ER and Chicago Hope (1994– 2000) were continuing the transformation to showing the private side and lives of physicians, including vivid demonstrations of their weaknesses and insecurities. Dr. Chory found that, regardless of the respondents’ personal experience with physicians, those who watched certain kinds of television had declining perceptions of physicians’ composure and regard for others. Her results indicated that the more prime time physician shows that people watched in which physicians were the main characters, the more uncaring, cold, and unfriendly the respondents thought physicians were.
a. Answer the following four questions for the observational study described in this exercise.
1. What is the population of interest?
2. Was the sample selected in a reasonable way?
3. Is the sample likely to be representative of the population of interest?
4. Are there any obvious sources of bias?
b. Based on the study design, do you think that the stated conclusions are reasonable?