Like this headline from Healthline?
Study Finds 96% of Physicians Are Vaccinated for COVID-19
https://www.healthline.com/health-news/study-finds-96-of-physicians-are-vaccinated-for-covid-19
This is EXACTLY the type of misleading title I’m taking about... this is “accurate” to you?
So you’ve spent time looking at the AAPS study apparently, what are your thoughts about the AMA study that my thread was all about?
Do you think it supports the Healthline article above?
I would expect more medical doctors to be vaccinated than not.
I'd say the title is somewhat accurate yes, but "survey" would have been better as while a survey technically is a study, it can lead people to believe that a study have to be more encompassing. "Survey finds that 96% may already have been vaccinated" would have been much better considering how people will interpret it.
The AMA surveyed 301 respondents. There are about 1.000.000 physicians in the US. 96% of the respondents answered that they had been vaccinated. Based on that sample size, percentage and population, that would mean the 95% confidence interval would be roughly 93-99%. Meaning that, there's a 95% chance that the true mean of the population is within that number. That's pretty robust. HOWEVER, what's way more important in a survey is the inclusion criteria and other risks of bias. I couldn't find much about the methodology in the report, but I did find that survey respondents were gathered through WebMD. So, we know they surveyed actual physicians and we might assume that any physician nationally had access. We would have to know their affiliations to assess any political bias, which we don't, however we can see that they had physicians from all regions of the US participate. As well as other demographic factors which were somewhat well distributed. One thing though is that, we don't know if being un-vaccinated as a physician would, which does bring some stigma with it, would prevent them from wanting to participate. Then again, it was most likely anonymous. You can look at the report here:
https://www.ama-assn.org/system/files/2021-06/physician-vaccination-study-topline-report.pdf
So based on that cursory glance, it seems like a somewhat decent survey. You'd have to dig a lot deeper to know exactly how representative it is, but it doesn't strike me as inherently flawed. I do agree that the most accurate framing would be "survey has found that" and then follow up with how many was asked and how. And you do have a good point about questioning these things and you seem like a smart dude who actually looks into things. With that, it wouldn't surprise me if more than 90% of physicians in the US have been vaccinated give that ~76%, and growing, of the general population have had their first jab and 50% have already been fully vaccinated. Outside of being a social norm and them definitely not wanting to infect their patients, physicians have a huge responsibility, they generally follow the science and they were offered the vaccine before anyone else. As the Healthline article points out:
"When the vaccines were first introduced, they were available to healthcare workers first, so that group had more time to get them in recent months.
“In addition, most physicians have easy access to either vaccine centers or large health systems that were utilized as vaccine sites early on. Lastly, most physicians make decisions based on data and belief or trust in science,” she said.
All in all it seems pretty reasonable to me, without deep diving.
