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Tutorials in Clinical Research, Part VI: Descriptive Statistics
Author(s) -
Neely J. Gail,
Stewart Michael G.,
Hartman James M.,
Forsen James W.,
Wallace Mark S.
Publication year - 2002
Publication title -
the laryngoscope
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.181
H-Index - 148
eISSN - 1531-4995
pISSN - 0023-852X
DOI - 10.1002/j.1531-4995.2002.tb00001.x
Subject(s) - descriptive statistics , computer science , scope (computer science) , data science , construct (python library) , descriptive research , task (project management) , medical statistics , statistics , management science , mathematics , management , economics , programming language
Objectives : This is the sixth in a series of Tutorials in Clinical Research. The objectives of this tutorial are to produce a brief, step‐by‐step, user‐friendly atlas with clinical scenarios and illustrative examples to serve as ready references and, it is hoped, to open an inviting door to understanding statistics. Study Design : Tutorial. Methods : The authors met weekly for 6 months discussing clinical research articles and the applied statistics. Liberal use of reference texts and discussion focused on constructing a tutorial that is factual as well as easy to read and understand. Results : The tutorial is organized into five sections: Overview, Key to Descriptive Summaries, Steps in Summarizing Descriptive Data, Understanding the Summaries of Specific Data Types, and Understanding Scope or Dispersion of Data. Conclusions : Assessing the validity of medical studies requires a working knowledge of statistics; however, obtaining this knowledge need not be beyond the ability of the busy surgeon. Desire is the only limiting factor. We have tried to construct an accurate, basic, easy‐to‐read‐and‐apply introduction to the task of summarizing the characteristics of a single variable. This is known as descriptive statistics. Key Words : Research and methods, research design, clinical protocols, statistics and methods.