Assignment 2 for public health

Note: For purposes of this paper, we ignore whether observed differences are statistically significant whenever observed differences in outcomes are discussed.

1. Go to https://www.cdc.gov/brfss/brfssprevalence/index.html for the CDC’s BRFSS Prevalence and Trends data. Your goal for this part is to create a graph for New York State that shows “years” on the horizontal axis, “percent reporting five of more children” on the vertical axis, and trend lines by educational status in the body of the graph.  Data are searchable by state.  There is an interactive map – click on New York State.  Now select Class = “Demographics” and then Topic = “Number of Children.”  (You want “Five or more children” ultimately to be reported – this should be automatic, but you should double-check.)  Click “Go,” then check “All years available,” then View By “Education.”  Those are all the hints you get about how to create the appropriate graph.  Write one paragraph interpreting the results of the graph; specifically, how is percent with five or more children related to education?  Is there an obvious trend over time in the relationship between education and number of children?  (Rule of thumb: a reader should be able to see your graph without your paragraph text, or to see your text without seeing the graph, and know what the story is.)
2. Go to https://www.countyhealthrankings.org/ for the RWJ County Health Indicators and Roadmap.  Scroll down, click New York State.  You will look at 2020 data.  Your goal for this part is to create a table for New York State that shows, for the “top five” and the “bottom five” counties, the “teen birth rate” and the “high school graduation rate” for year 2020. Data are searchable by state.  There is an interactive map – click on New York State.  Select the “Rankings” tab.  Instead of “Health Outcomes, Overall Rank,” you must select “Health Factors, Social & Economic Factors” so that counties are ranked that way.  Saratoga will be #1, Bronx will be #62 (last).  The table you create will include the top five and the bottom five counties according to this ranking  There are several ways to get the needed data points for these 10 counties regarding teen birth rate and high school graduation rate.  The instructor likes to download the data into a csv file and open it in Excel, find the needed data points there, and create a table.  You may do it that way or another way.  Those are all the hints you get.  Write one paragraph interpreting the results of the table; specifically, how is the teen birth rate related to education?  Do the bottom counties appear be systematically different than the top counties?  (Rule of thumb: a reader should be able to see your graph without your paragraph text, or to see your text without seeing the graph, and know what the story is.)
3. Lastly, complement your findings from (1) and (2) above with a 250-word literature review that includes at least three peer-reviewed journal articles relating to the impact of education on unplanned pregnancies.