What can taking a Psychological Research Methods class teach you about H1N1?

We’ve been talking about measuring independent and dependent variables in my research methods class – I know, I know, what is so interesting about dependent variables? Well, they’re fascinating! Whenever we do research, we have to decide what variables, or factors, to measure so that we can learn something about human behavior or the human experience. And the way we decide to measure those variables or even the variables we choose to measure can drastically impact what we learn about our experiences and about human behavior.

I’m guessing that we’ve all heard news stories about H1N1 and the increased incidence of flu-like symptoms recently but have you wondered about how we know that flu symptoms are increasing?

The Center for Disease Control (CDC) tracks flu, along with other diseases, by collecting data from doctors, hospitals, state health agencies, and, unfortunately, morgues. Essentially, someone reports how many patients come in for medical health visits with flu-like symptoms. The CDC compiles all of this data and computes an estimate of the incidence of flu within the U.S. population (you can view this data by week at http://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/fluactivity.htm).

Last year, Google tried a new method of collecting data and measuring how many people get flu. Instead of relying on doctor reports, they used information collected by Google – how many people search for flu-symptoms online. This is an entirely different way of assessing the variable of how many people get the flu and could potentially yield entirely different results. But last year, and again this year, Google’s data has mirrored the data obtained by the CDC but it’s updated daily.

You can learn more about Google Flu Trends at http://www.google.org/flutrends/about/how.html and http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v457/n7232/full/nature07634.html

And, visit this year’s Google Flu results and see how many people are looking for flu-symptom information compared to this time last year at http://www.google.org/flutrends/us/.