title: Understanding descriptive statistics.
abstract: There is an increasing expectation that critical care nurses use clinical research when making decisions about patient care. This article is the second in a series which addresses statistics for clinical nursing practice. In this article we provide an introduction to the use of descriptive statistics. Concepts such as levels of measurement, measures of central tendency and dispersion are described and their use in clinical practice is illustrated.
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Nursing and Midwifery (MO2), University of Sydney, 88 Mallett Street, Camperdown, NSW 2006, Australia. m.fisher@usyd.edu.au
authors.forename: Murray J
authors.initials: MJ
authors.lastname: Fisher
authors.forename: Andrea P
authors.initials: AP
authors.lastname: Marshall
mesh_terms: D015400:Clinical Nursing Research / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D003627:Data Interpretation, Statistical; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D013223:Statistics as Topic / Q000379:methods