Tutorials in clinical research, part VI: descriptive statistics.
OBJECTIVE
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.


METHODS
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.
Neely
J Gail
JG
Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, Missouri 63110, U.S.A. jgneely@aol.com
Stewart
Michael G
MG
Hartman
James M
JM
Forsen
James W
JW
Wallace
Mark S
MS
D003627:Data Interpretation, Statistical; D012106:Research; D013223:Statistics as Topic / Q000379:methods*