Alfa Institute of Biomedical Sciences (AIBS), Athens, Greece.
PLoS One. 2013;8(1):e47229. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0047229. Epub 2013 Jan 11.
Biomedical literature is increasingly enriched with literature reviews and meta-analyses. We sought to assess the understanding of statistical terms routinely used in such studies, among researchers.
An online survey posing 4 clinically-oriented multiple-choice questions was conducted in an international sample of randomly selected corresponding authors of articles indexed by PubMed.
A total of 315 unique complete forms were analyzed (participation rate 39.4%), mostly from Europe (48%), North America (31%), and Asia/Pacific (17%). Only 10.5% of the participants answered correctly all 4 "interpretation" questions while 9.2% answered all questions incorrectly. Regarding each question, 51.1%, 71.4%, and 40.6% of the participants correctly interpreted statistical significance of a given odds ratio, risk ratio, and weighted mean difference with 95% confidence intervals respectively, while 43.5% correctly replied that no statistical model can adjust for clinical heterogeneity. Clinicians had more correct answers than non-clinicians (mean score ± standard deviation: 2.27±1.06 versus 1.83±1.14, p<0.001); among clinicians, there was a trend towards a higher score in medical specialists (2.37±1.07 versus 2.04±1.04, p = 0.06) and a lower score in clinical laboratory specialists (1.7±0.95 versus 2.3±1.06, p = 0.08). No association was observed between the respondents' region or questionnaire completion time and participants' score.
A considerable proportion of researchers, randomly selected from a diverse international sample of biomedical scientists, misinterpreted statistical terms commonly reported in meta-analyses. Authors could be prompted to explicitly interpret their findings to prevent misunderstandings and readers are encouraged to keep up with basic biostatistics.
生物医学文献越来越多地包含文献综述和荟萃分析。我们旨在评估研究人员对这类研究中常用统计术语的理解程度。
我们在国际范围内，以 PubMed 索引文章的随机选择的通讯作者为对象，进行了一项在线调查，提出了 4 个临床相关的多项选择题。
共分析了 315 份完整的、唯一的问卷（参与率为 39.4%），参与者主要来自欧洲（48%）、北美（31%）和亚太地区（17%）。只有 10.5%的参与者正确回答了所有 4 个“解释”问题，而 9.2%的参与者全部答错。对于每个问题，51.1%、71.4%和 40.6%的参与者正确解释了给定比值比、风险比和加权均数差的统计学意义，置信区间为 95%，而 43.5%的参与者正确回答没有统计模型可以调整临床异质性。临床医生的正确答案多于非临床医生（平均得分±标准差：2.27±1.06 与 1.83±1.14，p<0.001）；在临床医生中，医学专家的得分呈上升趋势（2.37±1.07 与 2.04±1.04，p=0.06），临床实验室专家的得分呈下降趋势（1.7±0.95 与 2.3±1.06，p=0.08）。没有观察到受访者所在地区或问卷完成时间与参与者得分之间的关联。
在一个来自不同国际生物医学科学家的多样化样本中，随机选择的相当一部分研究人员错误地解释了荟萃分析中常见的统计术语。作者可以被提示明确解释他们的研究结果，以避免误解，鼓励读者跟上基本的生物统计学。
