title: Statistical tools in published articles of a public health journal in 2013 and 2014: bibliometric cross-sectional study.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Research projects use statistical resources to express in numerical or graphic terms different magnitudes like frequencies, differences or associations.
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  The purpose of this paper is to describe the statistics tools utilization, with special emphasis in the use of conventional statistical tests and confidence intervals, to communicate results in a renowned public health peer reviewed journal in Colombia.
  
  
  METHODS
  We included the 84 articles published in the journal between 2013 and 2014.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The most used resource is frequency analysis (89.3%), followed by p values (65.5%) and confidence intervals (53.6%); 48.9% of the papers used confidence intervals together with p values; 29.8% use neither of them; 16.7% of the articles only used p values and 4.8% only confidence intervals.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Descriptive statistics is a tool widely used in research results presentation; the critics and caveats suggesting to avoid the exclusive use of the statistical signification test in the results presentation are not followed in the analysis and presentation of the research results.
authors.affiliation: Facultad de Medicina, Universidad CES, Medellin, Colombia. Address: Tr 5 # 41-15, Bogotá, Colombia. Email: montenegro.gino@uces.edu.co.
authors.forename: Víctor
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Arcila Quiceno
authors.affiliation: Universidad CES, Facultad de Medicina, Medellin, Colombia.
authors.forename: Elizabeth
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: García Restrepo
authors.affiliation: Universidad CES, Facultad de Medicina, Medellin, Colombia.
authors.forename: Natalia
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Gómez Rúa
authors.affiliation: Facultad de Medicina, Universidad CES, Medellin, Colombia.
authors.forename: Gino
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Montenegro Martínez
authors.affiliation: Universidad CES, Facultad de Medicina, Medellin, Colombia; Escuela Nacional de Salud Pública, La Habana, Cuba.
authors.forename: Luis Carlos
authors.initials: LC
authors.lastname: Silva Ayçaguer
mesh_terms: D015706:Bibliometrics; D003105:Colombia; D016001:Confidence Intervals; D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies; D003627:Data Interpretation, Statistical; D006801:Humans; D017712:Peer Review, Research; D010506:Periodicals as Topic / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D011634:Public Health; D013223:Statistics as Topic / Q000379:methods
keywords: P values; biostatistics; confidence intervals; descriptive statistics; public health