Table 2: Use of study variables per research question.

Research Question	Variable(s)/ Level of Measurement	Statistical Tests
1. What is the genotypic distribution of MRSA in a sub-population of Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province?	Age/Continuous	Mean and Standard Deviation
	Gender, hospital admission profile, survival, preexisting illnesses, health care risk factors, susceptibility profile(each drug) /Dichotomous	Frequencies
	Infection type/Categorical	Frequencies
2. What is the concordance between each pair-wise combination of the three phenotyping methods, health care risk factor, infection type, and susceptibility pattern, used to classify CA- vs HA-MRSA in Saudi Arabia?	Genotype Classification as HA-MRSA and CA-MRSA/ Dependent/Dichotomous	Cohen's Kappa
	Three Phenotyping Methods' Classification as HA-MRSA and CA-MRSA/Independent/ Dichotomous
3. What is the sensitivity and specificity of each phenotyping method (health care risk factor, infection type, susceptibility pattern) used to classify CA-MRSA vs HA-MRSA in Saudi Arabia?	Genotype classification as HA-MRSA and CA-MRSA/ Dichotomous	Sensitivity and specificity
	Three phenotyping methods' classification as HA-MRSA and CA-MRSA/ Dichotomous
4. Is it possible to predict HA-MRSA and CA-MRSA in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia using a combination of MRSA phenotypical classification factors?	Health Care Risk Factors	Multiple logistic regression -2 Log Likelihood Hosmer and Lemeshow
	Infection Type
	Susceptibility Pattern
	Age/Independent/ Continuous; Gender, hospital admission profile, survival, preexisting illnesses/ Dichotomous