title: Can't miss: conquer any number task by making important statistics simple. Part 6. Tests of statistical significance (z test statistic, rejecting the null hypothesis, p value), t test, z test for proportions, statistical significance versus meaningful difference.
abstract: Healthcare quality professionals need to understand and use inferential statistics to interpret sample data from their organizations. Since in quality improvement and healthcare research studies all the data from a population often are not available, investigators take samples and make inferences about that population using inferential statistics. This series of six articles will give readers an understanding of the concepts of inferential statistics as well as the specific tools for calculating confidence intervals and tests of statistical significance for samples of data. This article, Part 6, merges the four concepts of the (1) standard error of the difference between sample means, (2) the z test statistic, (3) rejecting the null hypothesis, and (4) the p value to provide a comprehensive view of tests of statistical significance. This is followed by a description of t tests, statistical tests for comparing two sample proportions, and Type I and Type II errors. The series of articles concludes with a description of statistical significance versus meaningful difference.
authors.affiliation: Group Health Cooperative of South Central Wisconsin, Madison, USA. john_hansen@ghc-hmo.com
authors.forename: John P
authors.initials: JP
authors.lastname: Hansen
mesh_terms: D016001:Confidence Intervals; D003627:Data Interpretation, Statistical; D011787:Quality of Health Care / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D014481:United States