Reference no: EM131818119

CBS reported on a study that explored the question of whether or not parents of dying children should talk to their children about death: "Using Sweden's comprehensive cancer and death records, the researchers found 368 children under 17 who had been diagnosed with cancer between 1992 and 1997 and who later died. They contacted the children's parents, and 80 percent of them filled out a long, anonymous questionnaire. Among the questions: "Did you talk about death with your child at any time?" Of the 429 parents who answered that, about onethird said they had done so, while two-thirds had not. None of the 147 who did so regretted talking about death. Among those who had not talked about death, 69 said they wished they had."16 The P-value for testing if there is a relationship between talking about death or not and experiencing regrets later or not was 0.000. Based on the size of the P-value, students are to state whether or not parents of dying children should be encouraged to consider talking to their children about death. Whose answer makes the most sense, statistically? Adam: You can't really draw any conclusions from this study, because only 80 percent of the parents filled out the questionnaire. Brittany: I think 80 percent is a good enough response rate, but all of the families were from Sweden. I would only be convinced if they sampled from all countries. Carlos: It would be hard enough to get all those records from one country. Anyway, going through the death of a child is probably similar for all parents, no matter where they're from. The small P-value convinces me that parents should be encouraged to talk about death with their kids, if they're dying. Dominique: 429 is such a small number compared to all the parents in the world who go through the death of a child. It's not a good idea to generalize about what's true for the population when it's so much larger than the sample.