Winter 2021
USAFacts
Projects
Research Question 1:
Which states have experienced the most and fewest COVID-19 deaths as a percentage of each state’s population?
Research Question 2:
How does having a disability affect COVID-19 incidence rates?
Hypothesis:
In a comparison of states, those having a disability will be more likely to have higher COVID-19 incidence rates than those without a disability.
Q1 Result
For this project, our research question is, in the United States, which states have experienced the most and the fewest COVID-19 deaths as percent of the state population? And here is a bar chart to answer the question.
Findings
As the graph shows, the x-axis represents all the states in the US, which is the independent variable. Each point on the x-axis corresponds to one specific state. We chose to use the abbreviations to represent the states at the x-axis because we wanted to make the graph visually more clean and make it easier to read, since the information is already very packed and the font is tiny. The y-axis represents the COVID-19 death rate. It is the dependent variable, which is measured in percent of the state population. We also organized the bars vertically because we think it gave a more direct impression of the death rate of each state starting at the left to right, and from low to high.
Looking at the graph, the states at the left have a lower COVID death rate, and the states at the right have a higher COVID death rate. The color of the bars indicates the severity of deaths in each state. This is also reflected by the legend on the right end in the chart. That is to say, the lighter shade of grey means a lower death rate, as the left side of the graph shows, and the deeper shade of grey means a higher death rate, as the right side of the graph shows. We believe the color gradient can help our audience to better comprehend the chart.
On the very left side, we can see that Hawaii, Vermont, and Alaska are the 3 states that have experienced the fewest COVID-19 deaths in percent of their state population. Among them, Hawaii has the lowest death rate, at around .03% of its state population. As we proceed to the right side, we can see that the top 3 states that have experienced the most COVID deaths are New Jersey, New York, and Massachusetts. The death rate for New Jersey is close to .25%, which is the highest among the whole nation.
Q2 Result
When looking through the census data and considering what we would examine in this project, we thought about a community that is often forgotten— the disabled community. In the US, 61 million adults have a disability. That’s 26 percent of the US population.
The census collects data about 6 disabilities— hearing, vision, cognitive, ambulatory, self-care, and independent living disabilities. We wondered how having a disability such as these studied by the census impacted contracting COVID and hypothesized that having a disability would increase one’s risk of contracting and having complications from COVID.
We made this hypothesis for a few reasons.
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According to a 2006 study, 2.5 million people with disabilities live in institutional groups. This leaves them unable to socially distance and control their exposure to COVID in many cases.
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The World Health Organization reports that having a disability can prevent people from being able to wash their hands, socially distance, and stay home during COVID, as some disabilities require in-person care from a doctor.
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Those with disabilities are more likely to have underlying health conditions that can lead to complications if they contract COVID.
Findings
However, the data did not confirm our beliefs. Here on the graph, the x axis shows our independent variable, the percent of people with a disability and the y axis shows our dependent variable, the percent of covid cases. We compared the two variables at the state level, which each point on the graph represents.
The relationship between the percentage of people who have a disability and the percentage of COVID cases has a negative relationship. This means that as the percentage of people with a disability raises, the percentage of COVID cases decreases, but just barely. This is indicated by the blue regression line on the graph, which shows the overall trend of the data. Also, the relationship is very weak, meaning there is a minimal relationship between the two variables, as indicated by the correlation coefficient ‘r’ equalling -0.06. Even more so, this relationship is not statistically significant, as indicated by the p-value equalling .664. This means that we cannot assume there is a meaningful relationship between the two variables, percentage of COVID-19 cases and percentage of people with a disability at the state level.
We wondered why this could be. So, we did some research and found that a few aspects of COVID responses neglect the disabled community and may be leading to the actual amount of COVID-19 cases among disabled people being under-reported.
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Disabled people often experience barriers to getting tested for COVID, such as not being able to drive or get to public transportation easily.
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Many people are not asked explicitly if they have a disability when getting tested for COVID and there is a lack of a system to track COVID cases specifically among disabled people
Basically, the data might not be accurately reflecting the true amount of disbaled people who have contracted COVID due to the lack of help and consideration the disabled community receives during the pandemic.
Going back to our research question, the data does not confirm our hypothesis that having a disability increases one’s risk of contracting COVID. However, based on our research stated previously, more research and consideration for the disbaled community is needed in this pandemic that has left far too many people forgotten.