Blog Assignment #2

1. The design of this study was that of a population study in 29 health centre districts in Japan. The study began in 1965. The subjects of this study were adults either 40 years old or over the age of 40, including both men and women. These subjects were interviewed and followed through a link between the risk-factor records, a residence list based on the annual census, and death certificates. The study itself was designed with a focus on discovering the effect of a husband's smoking on the risk of lung cancer in his non-smoking wife. Thus, the study consisted of detailed questions for the subjects about their daily lifestyles, including smoking habits. Because there were many questions as opposed to just one about smoking, the answers contained minimal subjective bias. The results of this study showed statistically that the wives of heavy smokers had higher risks of lung cancer than than those of non-smokers.
2. Something that I found very interesting within the results of this study was the fact that, despite the age and occupation of the husbands, the wives of ex-smokers experienced more deaths from lung cancer than those of currents smokers. This was surprising because I expected the opposite, seeing as ex-smoker's are no longer influencing their wives' healths with secondhand smoke while current smokers continue to do so on a daily basis.
3. The advantage of using this kind of study design, as stated above, is that the subjects don't know that they're being interviewed for the purpose of discovering the effects of their smoking. Therefore, they are less inclined to lie about sone specific question or any at all when answering such a wide variety of questions; they don't know what's being focused on anyway, so they answer everything honestly.