Khan Nazeer, Mumtaz Yasmin
Department of Research and Biostatistics, Dow Medical College, Karachi, Pakistan.
J Ayub Med Coll Abbottabad. 2009 Jul-Sep;21(3):166-71.
Statistics is mainly used in biological research to verify the clinicians and researchers findings and feelings, and gives scientific validity for their inferences. In Pakistan, the educational curriculum is developed in such a way that the students who are interested in entering in the field of biological sciences do not study mathematics after grade 10. Therefore, due to their fragile background of mathematical skills, the Pakistani medical professionals feel that they do not have adequate base to understand the basic concepts of statistical techniques when they try to use it in their research or read a scientific article. The aim of the study was to assess the attitude of medical faculty towards statistics.
A questionnaire containing 42 close-ended and 4 open-ended questions, related to the attitude and knowledge of statistics, was distributed among the teaching faculty of Dow University of Health Sciences (DUHS). One hundred and sixty-seven filled questionnaires were returned from 374 faculty members (response rate 44.7%).
Forty-three percent of the respondents claimed that they had 'introductive' level of statistics courses, 63% of the respondents strongly agreed that a good researcher must have some training in statistics, 82% of the faculty was in favour (strongly agreed or agreed) that statistics was really useful for research. Only 17% correctly stated that statistics is the science of uncertainty. Half of the respondents accepted that they have problem of writing the statistical section of the article. 64% of the subjects indicated that statistical teaching methods were the main reasons for the impression of its difficulties. 53% of the faculty indicated that the co-authorship of the statistician should depend upon his/her contribution in the study. Gender did not show any significant difference among the responses. However, senior faculty showed higher level of the importance for the use of statistics and difficulties of writing result section of articles as compared to junior faculty.
The study showed a low level of knowledge, but high level of the awareness for the use of statistical techniques in research and exhibited a good level of motivation for further training.
统计学主要用于生物学研究，以验证临床医生和研究人员的发现与感受，并为他们的推断提供科学依据。在巴基斯坦，教育课程的设置使得有志于进入生物科学领域的学生在10年级之后就不再学习数学。因此，由于数学技能基础薄弱，巴基斯坦的医学专业人员觉得在尝试将统计学应用于研究或阅读科研文章时，他们没有足够的基础来理解统计技术的基本概念。本研究的目的是评估医学教师对统计学的态度。
一份包含42个封闭式问题和4个开放式问题的问卷，与统计学的态度和知识相关，被分发给道健康科学大学（DUHS）的教师。从374名教师中回收了167份填写好的问卷（回复率44.7%）。
43%的受访者称他们有统计学课程的“入门”水平，63%的受访者强烈同意优秀的研究人员必须接受一些统计学培训，82%的教师赞成（强烈同意或同意）统计学对研究真的很有用。只有17%的人正确指出统计学是关于不确定性的科学。一半的受访者承认他们在撰写文章的统计部分时有困难。64%的受访者表示统计教学方法是造成其困难印象的主要原因。53%的教师表示统计学家作为共同作者应取决于其在研究中的贡献。不同性别在回答中没有显示出任何显著差异。然而，与初级教师相比，高级教师对统计学应用的重要性以及撰写文章结果部分的困难程度表现出更高的认知水平。
该研究表明知识水平较低，但对研究中使用统计技术的认知水平较高，并表现出接受进一步培训的良好积极性。
