Practice of wrong or inappropriate statistical method is a common phenomenon in the published articles in biomedical research. Other than knowledge of the statistical methods, another very important aspect is nature and type of the data collected and objective of the study because as per objective, corresponding statistical methods are selected which are suitable on given data. To select the appropriate statistical method, one need to know the assumption and conditions of the statistical methods, so that proper statistical method can be selected for data analysis. In statistics, for each specific situation, statistical methods are available to analysis and interpretation of the data. A wrong selection of the statistical method not only creates some serious problem during the interpretation of the findings but also affects the conclusion of the study. Selection of appropriate statistical method is very important step in analysis of biomedical data.
STATISTICAL DATA ANALYSIS METHODS HOW TO
In the present article, we have discussed the parametric and non-parametric methods, their assumptions, and how to select appropriate statistical methods for analysis and interpretation of the biomedical data. All type of statistical methods that are used to compare the means are called parametric while statistical methods used to compare other than means (ex-median/mean ranks/proportions) are called nonparametric methods. Selection of appropriate statistical method depends on the following three things: Aim and objective of the study, Type and distribution of the data used, and Nature of the observations (paired/unpaired).
Two main statistical methods are used in data analysis: descriptive statistics, which summarizes data using indexes such as mean and median and another is inferential statistics, which draw conclusions from data using statistical tests such as student's t-test. In biostatistics, for each of the specific situation, statistical methods are available for analysis and interpretation of the data.
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