There is no author summary for this article yet. Authors can add summaries to their articles on ScienceOpen to make them more accessible to a non-specialist audience.
Abstract
Our purpose was an assessment of statistical analysis in studies published in the
American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, as well as documentation of appropriate
and inappropriate statistical application.
All papers included in the Clinical Articles section and transactions of societies
sections of the January through June 1994 issues of the American Journal of Obstetrics
and Gynecology (volume 170, numbers 1 to 6) were reviewed for statistical usage. Each
paper was given a rating for the thoroughness of the listing of applied statistics
and a rating for the appropriateness of statistical usage, when possible.
Of the 190 available articles, 53 consisted of studies void of statistics, 8 of which
required statistics or claimed significance without the use of statistics. Therefore
145 articles were included in the final analysis. Because of inappropriate or incomplete
descriptions of statistics used within the article (52.6%), the ability to assess
the appropriateness of usage was severely limited. However, 44 articles (30.3%) could
be classified as having appropriate usage of statistics, whereas 46 articles (31.7%)
were deemed to have inappropriate usage of statistics. Furthermore, 27 of these 46
articles were noted to have serious flaws.
The lack of complete and detailed listings of applied statistics made it difficult
to assess the appropriateness of more than half the studies examined, suggesting a
need for more detailed guidelines as to the listing of statistical procedures used.
Despite this fact, nearly one third of the articles contained examples of statistics
used inappropriately. These findings suggest that a policy of statistical review be
instituted.