The Semmelweis Experiments

OS 512 2004

Your homework assignments are to design three experiments.

1. The first must be a pre-experimental design.

2. The second must be a quasi-experimental design.

3. The third must be a true experimental design.

The situation for all three designs is the same. You work with Agnaz Semmelweis, the Chief of Obstetrics at Vienna General Hospital. You, he, and all the physicians in the hospital spend much time learning from the cadavers in the morgue, and usually go straight from there to the obstetrics wards. Semmelweis has the hypothesis that the high percentage of deaths of mothers (up to 20%) is somehow due to contamination brought from the morgue on the hands of the doctors. He asks you to design a study to test his hypothesis. Since this is Austria and Semmelweis is the Chief you will have the cooperation of all the physicians, and since the year is 1860 and the ethical codes and IRBs will not be invented for another century you will have the cooperation of all the patients.

In about one page, double-spaced, give each of the items in your design of the study.

(The information in the paragraph above is sufficient to design a study. But if you are interested in the history of the problem, a chapter is available on reserve for this course on the Blackboard web site.)