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Table 1 Baseline Characteristics and IAT Scores of Physician Participants

From: Implicit Bias among Physicians and its Prediction of Thrombolysis Decisions for Black and White Patients

  Assigned vignette picture Mean IAT score*
Characteristics Black White Attitude (good/bad) General cooperativeness Cooperativeness with procedures
Overall      
 For demographics (N = 220) n = 108 n = 112 0.36† (SD = 0.40) 0.30† (SD = 0.39) 0.22† (SD = 0.40)
Age, mean (SD), years (N = 220) 29.2 (2.4) 28.9 (3.2) NS NS NS
Sex (P = .58)    P = .17 P = .12 P = .20
 % Female (n = 83) 41.9 38.2 0.32† 0.25† 0.18†
 % Male (n = 124) 58.1 61.8 0.39† 0.34† 0.25†
Race/ethnicity (P = .57)      
 % European-American/White (n = 131) 67.9 60.4 0.40† 0.31† 0.22†
 % African-American/Black (n = 10) 2.8 6.3 −0.04‡ −0.02‡ −0.07‡
 % Hispanic/Latino (n = 5) 0.9 3.6 0.36§ 0.13§ 0.27§
 % Asian/Pacific Islander (n = 51) 22.6 24.3 0.38† 0.40† 0.27†
 % Other (n = 12) 5.7 5.4 0.22 0.23 0.09
Socioeconomic background (P = .63)    P = .11 P = .71 P = .15
 % Lower/lower middle (n = 21) 11.3 9.8 0.16 0.22† 0.06
 % Middle (n = 61) 28.3 30.4 0.38† 0.30† 0.23†
 % Upper middle (n = 109) 50.0 53.6 0.39† 0.31† 0.26†
 % Upper (n = 18) 10.4 6.3 0.30† 0.36† 0.15
Specialty (P = .36)    P = .56 P = .02 P = .10
 % Internal Medicine (n = 175) 80.2 83.0 0.36† 0.33† 0.24†
 % Emergency Medicine (n = 35) 19.8 17.0 0.32† 0.17† 0.12
City (P = .38)    P = .77 P = .79 P = .54
 % Boston, MA (n = 167) 81.1 78.6 0.35† 0.31† 0.23†
 % Atlanta, Ga (n = 43) 18.9 21.4 0.37† 0.29† 0.19†
Year of training (P = .05)    P = .80 P = .81 P = .93
 % First (n = 82) 34.3 45.5 0.38† 0.32† 0.23†
 % Second (n = 56) 23.8 30.4 0.37† 0.28† 0.21†
 % Third and higher (n = 71) 41.9 24.1 0.33† 0.30† 0.20†
% Black patients seen (P = .57)    P = .75 P = .08 P = .28
 <=20% (n = 70) 34.0 32.2 0.37† 0.37† 0.26†
 >20% (n = 140) 66.0 67.8 0.35† 0.27† 0.20†
Mean IAT score    – – –
 Attitude (good/bad) (P = .88) 0.35† 0.36†    
 General cooperativeness (P = .44) 0.32† 0.28†    
 Medical cooperativeness (P = .28) 0.19† 0.25†    
  1. No statistically significant differences by assigned vignette picture using chi-squared (categorical variables) or Student’s t test (continuous variables). In the sample there were 10 black physicians. Exclusion of their data did not notably or significantly change any of the data reported here, therefore, all physicians’ data (regardless of race) are displayed.
  2. No significant (NS) difference in mean IAT score for participants above versus below mean age
  3. *Implicit Association Test (IAT) scores: positive value represents prowhite bias, negative value represents problack bias
  4. †Values are statistically significantly different from zero at P < .05
  5. ‡Statistically significant difference from the other groups combined, by Student’s t test
  6. §Significance tests conducted on subsamples smaller than n = 10 are not stable parameter estimates and are, therefore, not reported. IAT effects based on these small sample sizes should be interpreted with caution.
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