What is it about?
Statistical data analysis methods play an important role in prominent respiratory journals. We evaluated the application and complexity of data analytical methods in high impact respiratory journals and compared the statistical reporting in these respiratory articles with reports published in other eminent medical journals. This study involved a total of 160 papers published in 2015 in European Respiratory Journal, American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, Chest and Thorax; and 680 papers published between 2007 - 2015 in other medical journals including the Lancet and New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM). The statistical intensity in the respiratory journals was equal to that in eminent medical journals. Readers of the prominent respiratory journals need to possess a substantial level of statistical expertise if they wish to critically evaluate the design, methodology, data analysis, and interpretation of the findings published in these journals.
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Why is it important?
This study provides new information on the status of statistical methods applied for analyzing data in journals devoted to respiratory research.
Perspectives
We encourage all readers, authors and reviewers of respiratory journals who wish to be more effective consumers of the respiratory literature to review their own statistical skills and to present their results in a manner similar to that advocated and presented in the prominent respiratory journals.
Pentti Nieminen
University of Oulu, Medical Informatics and Data Analysis Research Group
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Reporting data analysis methods in high-impact respiratory journals, ERJ Open Research, April 2018, European Respiratory Society (ERS),
DOI: 10.1183/23120541.00140-2017.
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