Quiz 2: Measuring health problems

Please choose the one, most correct answer to each question or statement.

1. Why is it important to know how common particular diseases are?
   • It is not important if the diseases are common
   • It helps to know whether staff have a good reason to be absent from work
   • It is useful to plan services
   • In private practice it helps to know how much to charge patients
2. Disease prevalence is a measure of:
   • How serious is a disease
   • How common is a disease
   • How expensive it is the treat the disease
   • How many people are at risk of dying from the disease
3. Incidence of a disease is a measure of:
   • How many people with the disease are in hospital
   • How many people have died of the disease
   • How many new cases are there of the disease
   • How infectious is the disease
4. How is incidence and prevalence related?
   • When incidence increases the prevalence usually falls
   • When incidence increases the prevalence usually also increases
   • When the incidence falls the prevalence rapidly become zero
   • There is no relationship between incidence and prevalence
5. What is the burden of disease?
   • The impact of the disease on the community
   • The cost of preventing a disease
   • The number of obese people in the community
   • A screening system to make sure that the sickest people are seen first at a clinic
6. Calculating a DALY depends on:
   • The number of people living in the community
   • The number of years of employment lost from the disease
   • The number of years lived before the start of the disease
   • Both the number of years lost plus years lived with disability as a result of a condition.
7. How are DALYs used in practice?
   • To compare different patients
   • To compare different services
   • To compare different communities
   • To compare different countries or health regions
8. What does a QALY measure?
   • The standard of service provided in a clinic
   • The quality of care in hospital
   • Health gained over years
   • An assessment of the cost of providing care
9. Caseload is a measure of:
   • The number and type of patients seen at a facility
   • The number of patients who die in a facility
   • The number of patients who pay for services at a facility
   • The number of patients who complain of poor service in a facility
10. What is an ICD code?
    • An international code of service quality
    • A South African code of healthcare practice
    • A classification of diseases or conditions
    • A method of speaking confidentially to colleagues in front of a patient
11. What is public health surveillance?
    • Making a video of the public as they enter a health facility
    • Counting the number of patients in hospital beds
    • Monitoring the pattern of disease
    • Recording clinic attendance
12. What is traditional surveillance?
    • Surveillance using cameras to record patient numbers
    • Surveillance that monitors names illnesses
    • Surveillance that tracks diagnosed conditions
    • Surveillance that depends on patients to report their conditions
13. Syndromic surveillance depends on many sources including:
    • ICD coding in a clinic
    • Laboratory results
    • Records of common notifiable conditions
    • Pharmacy sales
14. How is the mean determined?
    • It is the largest number in a set of data
    • It is the smallest number in a set of data
    • It is the commonest number in a set of data
    • It is the sum of all the values added together and then divided by the number of values
15. What is a median?
    • It is the “middle number” in a data set, arranged from the largest to the smallest
    • It is the difference between the highest and lowest number in a data set
    • It is the same as a mean
    • It is the same as the mode
16. What is the mode?
    • It is the furthest outlier in a data set
    • It is the commonest value in a data set
    • It is the difference between the highest and lowest value in a data set
    • It is the sum of all the values added together
17. What is the value of knowing the standard deviation?
    • It indicates the spread of the data around the mean
    • It indicates the spread of data around the median
    • It indicates the spread of data around the mode
    • It has very little value and is not used when analysing clinical data
18. The range of results is usually used with:
    • Means
    • Medians
    • Modes
    • Both means and modes
19. How should outliers be handled?
    • If there is only one it can be ignored to clean the data set
    • Up to 10% of the total number of very high or low values can be ignored
    • Only ignore outliers if there are both high and low values
    • Outliers should not be ignored but explored
20. What is a proportion?
    • It is the total number of values in a data set
    • It consists of a numerator divided by a denominator
    • It consists of a denominator divided by a numerator
    • It is the numerator multiplied by the denominator