Developing Research Question Assignment
After looking through the GapMinder Datasheet, I decided to focus on the life expectancy variable. Not all the countries listed have a value for this variable, so I will only include all the countries that have a life expectancy value in my personal codebook.
I presume that the cases of HIV and/or breast cancer in a country would most likely influence its mortality rates - which, in turn, would influence life expectancy. Thus, I am interested in figuring out what sort of associations are there between life expectancy and the HIV rates in countries, as well as between life expectancy and breast cancer cases in countries. Which is why I will also include the HIV rates and breast cancer cases for countries with a life expectancy value in my personal codebook.
Given that the life expectancy provided in the GapMinder datasheet is the 2011 life expectancy at birth, I decided to search for the mortality rates of breast cancer and HIV during 2011 as part of the literature review; which led me to the World Health Organization's Mortality Database. Within the database, I found the percentage of deaths caused by breast cancer out of total deaths for several countries during the year 2011; I found similar values for HIV as well. The highest percentage of deaths caused by breast cancer during 2011 was 3% in Barbados (World Health Organization, n.d.-a); and the highest percentage of deaths caused by HIV during 2011 was 6.4% in Belize (World Health Organization, n.d.-b). Thus, given these seemingly low percentages, I expect that the cases of HIV and breast cancer in a country would not have significant influence over the life expectancy of that country.
I also made the following search on Google Scholar: "association between life expectancy and hiv worldwide". This led me to the following journal article by Mansori et al. (2017). I conducted a similar search regarding breast cancer on Google Scholar as well, which led me to the following journal article by Ghoncheh, Mirzaei, and Salehiniya (2016). According to Ghoncheh, Mirzaei, and Salehiniya's research, countries with higher Human Development Index(i.e., HDI) have higher incidences of breast cancer than countries with lower HDI (2016, p.8442). Given that life expectancy is one of the components of HDI (Ghoncheh, Mirzaei, & Salehiniya, 2016, p.8439), I expect countries with higher life expectancy would have higher incidences of breast cancer than countries with lower life expectancy. On the other hand, the research by Mansori et al. suggests that incidence rates of HIV were higher in lower HDI countries than in higher HDI countries (2017, Discussion section, paragraph 5). Thus, I expect countries with lower life expectancy would have higher HIV incidence rates.
Therefore, based on my literature review, I hypothesize that higher life expectancy would be strongly associated with higher breast cancer cases, whereas, lower life expectancy would be strongly associated with higher HIV rates.
Ghoncheh, M., Mirzaei, M., & Salehiniya, H. (2016). Incidence and mortality of breast cancer and their relationship with the human development index (HDI) in the world in 2012. Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention, 16(18), 8439–8443. Google Scholar. https://doi.org/10.7314/apjcp.2015.16.18.8439
Mansori, K., Ayubi, E., Shadmani, F. K., Hanis, S. M., Khazaei, S., Sani, M., … Mohammadbeigi, A. (2017). Estimates of global HIV/AIDS mortality, prevalence and incidence rates, and their association with the human development index. Biomedical Research and Therapy, 4(06), 1400–1410. https://doi.org/10.15419/bmrat.v4i06.181
World Health Organization. (n.d.-a). Breast cancer. Retrieved January 5, 2024, from WHO Mortality Database website: https://platform.who.int/mortality/themes/theme-details/topics/indicator-groups/indicator-group-details/MDB/breast-cancer
World Health Organization. (n.d.-b). HIV/AIDS. Retrieved January 5, 2024, from WHO Mortality Database website: https://platform.who.int/mortality/themes/theme-details/topics/indicator-groups/indicator-group-details/MDB/hiv-aids