The statistical reporting quality of articles published in 2010 in five dental journals.
OBJECTIVE
Statistical methods play an important role in medical and dental research. In earlier studies it has been observed that current use of methods and reporting of statistics are responsible for some of the errors in the interpretation of results. The aim of this study was to investigate the quality of statistical reporting in dental research articles.


METHODS
A total of 200 articles published in 2010 were analysed covering five dental journals: Journal of Dental Research, Caries Research, Community Dentistry and Oral Epidemiology, Journal of Dentistry and Acta Odontologica Scandinavica. Each paper underwent careful scrutiny for the use of statistical methods and reporting. A paper with at least one poor reporting item has been classified as 'problems with reporting statistics' and a paper without any poor reporting item as 'acceptable'.


RESULTS
The investigation showed that 18 (9%) papers were acceptable and 182 (91%) papers contained at least one poor reporting item.


CONCLUSIONS
The proportion of at least one poor reporting item in this survey was high (91%). The authors of dental journals should be encouraged to improve the statistical section of their research articles and to present the results in such a way that it is in line with the policy and presentation of the leading dental journals.
Institute of Dentistry, University of Oulu , Oulu , Finland.
Hannu
H
Vähänikkilä
Leo
L
Tjäderhane
Pentti
P
Nieminen
D015706:Bibliometrics; D003149:Community Dentistry; D003627:Data Interpretation, Statistical; D003731:Dental Caries; D018865:Dental Research / Q000592:standards / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D003813:Dentistry; D004813:Epidemiology; D006801:Humans; D010506:Periodicals as Topic / Q000592:standards / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D012107:Research Design / Q000592:standards / Q000706:statistics & numerical data
articles; journals; review literature; statistics reporting