Owen Yang
Collect some information on socioeconomic status please
You would be surprised how medical doctors think it was unnecessary to collect this. it is true that not all medical conditions are linked to socioeconomic status, but socioeconomic status is likely to affect patient’s ability to access to healthcare and ability to manage health conditions.
At this point it is probably wise to get open-minded and have a little understanding on what socioeconomic status is. In some culture income might not be the best measure.
On a side note, for a long time I have been having the idea that the best indicator (if there is one) of socioeconomic status will be what we buy and what we have, instead of education or income. Unfortunately in the academia no one is listening to me at the moment. Amazon would probably agree.
Think about social representativeness
It is perhaps medical research 101, but how much have you given a thought? I would skip the simple concept and just mention two common misconceptions that I can remember.
One misconception is that representativeness is about getting the proportion right: if there is 5% in the population then it should be 5% in the study sample. I would say this sentence is correct in itself, but in my opinion it does not help to address inequality. I would suggest it is more important to ensure the absolute number of the group in the study sample is sufficient for research, regardless of the proportion in the study sample. For example, if 100 is considered sufficient for comparing white and black individuals, then at least 100 white and 100 black individuals should be recruited.
The proportion, however, is less important. If you have recruited 300 individuals in the study with 5% black here, it would be only 15. There is little we can do to investigate the impact of race. It is not uncommon to see people claiming representativeness in their research, but in reality it looks like using minority as some sort of rubber stamp.
Think about social pathways
A more advanced thing to do is actually thinking about the pathways though which social factors are affecting the study or the medical conditions and try to capture some of these factor.
Is it because of the general economic condition that individuals cannot afford to access to health service, or afford to have a healthy lifestyle? Is it because of the level of education that individuals are not empowered to take control of their health, or take control of their life entirely? Is it largely attributed by the physical environment, for example air pollution or accessibility to clean water? Is it anything to do with the social environment, such a peer pressure, work culture, or Instagram/Tik-tok?
Here we are focused on asking the right question here, and try to capture the information. The actual investigation on this types of pathway questions would probably need some slightly more advanced study design and statistical discussion.
Let me know if you have tried to do something in your research to address social and health inequality.
