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ORIGINAL ARTICLES: USAGE OF STATISTICS IN THE SURGICAL LITERATURE AND THE ‘ORPHAN P ’ PHENOMENON
Author(s) -
Oliver David,
Hall JohnC.
Publication year - 1989
Publication title -
australian and new zealand journal of surgery
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.111
H-Index - 51
eISSN - 1445-2197
pISSN - 0004-8682
DOI - 10.1111/j.1445-2197.1989.tb01609.x
Subject(s) - medicine , statistic , descriptive statistics , notation , statistics , mathematics , arithmetic
The statistics used in 240 surgical publications were reviewed. Basic parametric statistics were used in 60% of the publications; 21% of publications failed to document a measure of central tendency, 11% of publications contained an undefined notation, and 10% of publications did not state the type of evaluative statistic that was used to calculate a p value, that is, an ‘orphan p ’. These results indicate the need for wider education about the use of descriptive and basic parametric statistics. It is impossible to evaluate the surgical literature critically without these skills.