Historic source document from the Coastal Research Group local archive.
RESEARCH QUESTIONS AND HYPOTHESES Longer Term Research Questions: Has the new (30 year old) family practice specialty proved to be viable?
Do family physicians meet society's need for a generalist physician?
Are the practices of family physicians geographically distributed in proportion to the population?
Do family practices meet the needs of inner city, suburban, and rural communities?
Do family practices meet the needs of linguistic and cultural minorities?
Preliminary Hypotheses Hypthosis One: The location of the high school of graduation of family practice residency graduates has an important aggregate influence on the geographic distribution of such graduates.
Hypothesis Two: The socioeconomic status of the community around a physician's practice is correlated to the socioeconomic status of the patients in the practice.
Hypothesis Three: In the case of "closed panel" health maintenance organizations or similar practices, the correlation between the socioeconomic status of the community around a practice, and the patients in the physician practice may be smaller (than that correlation posited by Hypothesis Two), but exists nonetheless.
Hypothesis Four: Cultural and linguistic minorities are disproportionately represented in the practices of bicultural and bilingual physicians who relate to the culture and language of those minorities.
Hypothesis Five: The geographic distribution and practice content of male and female family practice graduates differ.
Source file: coastal/Items 080899/HYPOTHES.txt. Historic from local Coastal Research Group archive files during the DEV archive reorganization.