Understanding of Statistical Terms Routinely Used in Meta-Analyses: An International Survey among Researchers

Michael N Mavros, Vangelis G Alexiou, Konstantinos Z Vardakas and Matthew E Falagas

PLOS ONE, 2013, vol. 8, issue 1, 1-5

Abstract: Objective: Biomedical literature is increasingly enriched with literature reviews and meta-analyses. We sought to assess the understanding of statistical terms routinely used in such studies, among researchers. Methods: An online survey posing 4 clinically-oriented multiple-choice questions was conducted in an international sample of randomly selected corresponding authors of articles indexed by PubMed. Results: A total of 315 unique complete forms were analyzed (participation rate 39.4%), mostly from Europe (48%), North America (31%), and Asia/Pacific (17%). Only 10.5% of the participants answered correctly all 4 “interpretation” questions while 9.2% answered all questions incorrectly. Regarding each question, 51.1%, 71.4%, and 40.6% of the participants correctly interpreted statistical significance of a given odds ratio, risk ratio, and weighted mean difference with 95% confidence intervals respectively, while 43.5% correctly replied that no statistical model can adjust for clinical heterogeneity. Clinicians had more correct answers than non-clinicians (mean score ± standard deviation: 2.27±1.06 versus 1.83±1.14, p

Date: 2013
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0047229 (text/html)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id= ... 47229&type=printable (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:plo:pone00:0047229

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0047229

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in PLOS ONE from Public Library of Science
Bibliographic data for series maintained by plosone ().