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In a study to determine contact patterns in Thailand, people were encouraged to use a contract tracing application over a 3-month period. The researcher found that young adults had the most active contact pattern than other age groups. Please help identify confounders for this association. Please provide one confounder for each student, and please try not to duplicate your friend previous answer.
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It is difficult to determine potential confounders in this scenario without more information about the study and the specific association between age and contact patterns. However, some potential confounders that could influence the association between age and contact patterns in this study could include:
Employment status: If young adults in the study are more likely to be employed or have more social interactions due to their job, this could explain why they have a more active contact pattern.
Education level: If young adults in the study have a higher education level and therefore more social interactions with peers, this could contribute to a more active contact pattern.
Marital status: If young adults in the study are more likely to be single and therefore have more social interactions, this could explain why they have a more active contact pattern.
Health behaviors: If young adults in the study have different health behaviors, such as engaging in more risky behaviors or participating in more social activities, this could contribute to a more active contact pattern.
Location: If young adults in the study live in different geographical areas with different social norms and opportunities for social interactions, this could influence their contact patterns.
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Technology experience and skills is the potential confounder between the association of age group and contact pattern. Below is the clarification.
Firstly, the level of technology experiences and skills could impact the contact pattern. People with previous experience and skills in using applications, for example, experience in using different kinds of application in daily life, would possibly accept and use the application more than people who have less experience and skills in technology. This can create a higher effect towards active contact pattern.
Secondly, the level of technology experience and skills has association with age groups. The number of people who have great experience and skills in using applications would vary in different age groups. The young adults’ group might contain more people who are familiar to the technology compared to other groups such as elderly.
Lastly, technology experience and skills isn’t the by-product between age group and contact pattern. -
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Travel patterns could be a confounding factor in the association between age and contact patterns in this study. Young adults may be more likely to travel than older adults, and travel could increase the opportunities for contact with others.
For example, young adults in Thailand may be more likely to take domestic or international trips for leisure, work, or study purposes. They may travel by plane, train, or bus, and stay in hotels or hostels where they may have more opportunities to interact with other travelers or local residents.
On the other hand, older adults may be less likely to travel or may take shorter trips closer to home. They may prefer to stay in more private accommodations such as vacation homes or relatives’ houses, where they may have fewer opportunities for contact with others.
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Well, this is a challenging case study where I almost got stuck. I have my own opinion about what might potentially become a confounder, which is the socioeconomic level. Please correct me if I’m wrong, but I distributed my reasons by:
1. Socioeconomic level is related to the user’s ability to follow the purpose of contract tracing up to the end. Participants with a good socioeconomic level will be able to buy a data package or update their cell phones at any time.
2. The socioeconomic level of young people may be very identical because they are in a moment that really needs communication devices.
3. Socioeconomic level is not an effect of age (is not a by-product of age). Prosperous children may come from their rich parents. And the elders may be considered at a good socio-economic level because at that age they have become rich or are from good family backgrounds.-
Thank you for sharing this. I also think of socioeconomic status. Not only it has an effect on ability of ones’ to afford a mobile device but also travel patterns. I think it has quite broad consequent effects when we mentioned about socioeconomic.
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Disease awareness
This confounder may be quite related to others comments but what I would like to highlight is the “awareness” of the application user. As our lesson learned from a previous contact tracing application in Thailand. In the initial phase, most people decided to enter information in contact tracing applications as much as possible because they hoped that they would receive the notification if they contacted infected people.
The disease awareness is quite related to the age of the subject. If the subject is too young, they might not be aware of the impact of the disease both for themself and society. If the subject is too old, they might not understand the impact of disease well either since the disease might be new or too complicated for their understanding.
The disease awareness, definitely, related to the contact pattern. If the subject is aware of the disease impact, prevention and other aspects. They tend to avoid contact of infected people and tend to enter the information in application to ensure that they receive notification of disease contact.-
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I think that awareness of project’s importance might be considered as confounders in this case.
– Young adults are the group understanding how beneficial is technology. Thus, it might lead to higher number of young adults intending to use the application constantly because they know that technology can finally provide benefits.
– Young adults are mostly affected from the disease since they have to socialize for the purpose of works and social importance. They might aware that the project can help.
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Number of their contact persons
The number of contact persons can determine their contact pattern. People who have many friends or colleagues during their business or recreation will be in the active contact pattern. On the other hand, those who does not have a lot of friend or do their business have less chance to be active contact pattern. Both older and younger people can have different number of friends and colleagues. Therefore, number of friends should be standardized between these two groups. -
I think behavioral factors (e.g. lifestyle of living) could be one of confounder of this association, if the abovementioned young adults were defined 18-25 years old.
In this group of age, people are actively active and have their lifestyle which may prone to be more socialize than other generations. In addition, they have their own technology skills and devices that can report via application when compare to other age groups. -
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Employment status could be one of confounders that associate with this finding. Those workers and employees, assumed that they are in working age group, they might be assigned from their organization to use a contact tracing application. While self-employed or retired group, they might use this app less, so, the contact pattern found less active.
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I agree with my friends’ previous answers, and I can think of another confounding factor: living area and location. Since we don’t know the demographic characteristics of the study subjects in Thailand, the location setting could affect the relationship between age and contact patterns, leading to incorrect conclusions.
For instance, young adults may tend to live in urban areas with higher population densities. These areas typically house top colleges or universities, as well as workplaces that require frequent social interactions. Furthermore, urban areas often offer numerous social activities that are attractive to young adults, who tend to have more active social lives compared to other age groups. Due to the higher population density in urban areas, young adults may be more likely to use contact tracing applications and had the most active contact pattern than other age groups.
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In a study to determine contact patterns in Thailand, people were encouraged to use a contract tracing application over a 3-month period. The researcher found that young adults had the most active contact pattern than other age groups. Please help identify confounders for this association. Please provide one confounder for each student, and please try not to duplicate your friend previous answer.The first thing that came up in my mind was users’ age. To declare, young adults could possibly have more ease of access and more comfortable using mobile application. It might be the reason why they contributed to most of the users, hence, the people entering information into the application. Other thing could be their lifestyles. Young adults are of the age of working, outgoing, interacting with more people.
Previous comments from our friends give a great example of the confounding factors! Very interesting.
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I think that awareness of project’s importance might be considered as confounders in this case.
– Young adults are the group understanding how beneficial is technology. Thus, it might lead to higher number of young adults intending to use the application constantly because they know that technology can finally provide benefits.
– Young adults are mostly affected from the disease since they have to socialize for the purpose of works and social importance. They might aware that the project can be helpful.
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