Medical Journals, Statistical Articles in
Douglas G. Altman
Cancer Research UK Medical Statistics Group, Oxford, UK
Search for more papers by this authorDouglas G. Altman
Cancer Research UK Medical Statistics Group, Oxford, UK
Search for more papers by this authorAbstract
There are thousands of publications that cover aspects of statistics scattered throughout the vast biomedical literature. This article provides a broad overview by categorizing them under seven headings: isolated papers on a particular statistical issue; series of thematic papers dedicated to a narrow statistical area; series of papers covering broad areas of medical statistics; guidelines; surveys of published papers reporting frequency of usage of statistical techniques; reviews of published papers examining critically, aspects of design, analysis, conduct, presentation, and summary; and finally, systematic reviews (meta-analysis) incorporating assessment of methodologic quality. Each category is described and discussed, and illustrated by examples selected to provide an idea of their scope, diversity, and quality
References
- 1 Altman, D. G. (1982). Statistics in medical journals, Statistics in Medicine 1, 59–71.
- 2 Altman, D. G. (1991). Statistics in medical journals: developments in the 1980s, Statistics in Medicine 10, 1897–1913.
- 3 Altman, D. G. & Bland, J. M. (1991). Improving doctors' understanding of statistics (with discussion), Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Series A 154, 223–267.
- 4 Altman, D. G. & Goodman, S. N. (1994). Transfer of technology from statistical journals to the biomedical literature: past trends and future predictions, Journal of the American Medical Association 272, 129–132.
- 5
Altman, D. G.,
Gore, S. M.,
Gardner, M. J. &
Pocock, S. J.
(1983).
Statistical guidelines for contributors to medical journals,
British Medical Journal
i,
1489–1493.
10.1136/bmj.286.6376.1489 Google Scholar
- 6 Ahman, D. G., Machin, D., Bryart, T. N. & Gardner, M. J. (2000). Statistical with Confidence: Confidence Interior and Statistical Guidelines, 2nd Ed. British Medical Journal, London.
- 7 Ahman, D. G., Schulz, K. F., Moher, D., Egger, M., Davidoff, F., Elbourne, D., Gøtzche, P. C. & Lang, T., for the CONSORT samp. (2001). The revised CONSORT statement for reprinting randomized trials: explanation and elaboration, Annals of internal medicine 134, 663–694.
- 8 Badgley, R. F. (1961). An assessment of research methods reported in 103 scientific articles from two Canadian medical journals, Canadian Medical Association Journal 85, 246–250.
- 9 Bailar, J. C. & Mosteller, F. (1986). Medical Uses of Statistics, 1st Ed. NEJM Books, Boston.
- 10 T. R. Beam, D. N. Gilbert & C. M. Kunin eds. (1992). Guidelines for the evaluation of anti-infective drug products, Clinical Infectious Diseases 15, Supplement 1.
- 11 Begg, C., Cho, M., Eastwood, S., Horton, R., Moher, D., Olkin, I., Pitkin, R., Rennie, D., Schulz, K. F., Simel, D. & Stroup, D. F. (1996). Improving the quality of reporting of randomized controlled trials: the CONSORT statement, Journal of the American Medical Association 276, 637–638.
- 12 Bland, J. M. & Altman, D. G. (1986). Statistical methods for assessing agreement between two methods of clinical measurement, Lancet i, 307–310.
- 13
Bland, J. M. &
Altman, D. G.
(1994).
Statistics Notes: Correlation, regression, and repeated data,
British Medical Journal
308,
596.
10.1136/bmj.308.6933.896 Google Scholar
- 14 Bracken, M. B. (1989). Reporting observational studies, British Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology 96, 383–388.
- 15 Brown, G. W. (1982). Standard deviation, standard error: which “standard” should we use? American Journal of Diseases of Childhood 136, 937–941.
- 16 Campbell, M. K., Elbourne, D. R. & Ahman, D. G., for the CONSORT Group. (2004). CONSORT statement: exterior to charter randomized trials. British Medical Journal 328, 702–708.
- 17 I. Chalmers & D. G. Altman eds. (1995). Systematic Reviews. BMJ Publishing Group, London.
- 18 Chalmers, T. C., Smith, H., Blackburn, B., Silverman, B., Schroeder, B., Reitman, D. & Ambroz, A. (1981). A method for assessing the quality of a randomized control trial, Controlled Clinical Trials 2, 31–49.
- 19 de Chaput Saintonge, D. M. (1977). Aide-mémoire for preparing clinical trial protocols, British Medical Journal i, 1323–1324.
- 20 CPMP Working Party on Efficacy of Medicinal Products (1995). Statistical methodology in clinical trials in applications for marketing authorizations for medicinal products, Note for Guidance iii/3630/92-EN, Statistics in Medicine 14, 1659–1682.
- 21 Cross, S. S., Harrison, R. F. & Kennedy, R. L. (1995). Introduction to neural networks, Lancet 346, 1075–1079.
- 22 Detsky, A. S., Naylor, C. D., O'Rourke, K., McGeer, A. J. & L'Abbé, K. A. (1992). Incorporating variations in the quality of individual randomized trials into meta-analysis, Journal of Clinical Epidemiology 45, 255–265.
- 23 Deveraux, P. J., Manns, B. J., Ghali, W. A., Quan, H., & Guyatt, G. H. (2002). The reporting of methodological factor in randomized controlled trials and the association with a journal policy to promote adherence to the Consolidated standards of Reporting Trials (CONSORT) checklist, Controlled Clinical Trials 23, 380–388.
- 24 Dunn, H. L. (1929). Application of statistical methods in physiology, Physiological Review 9, 275–398.
- 25
Egger, M.,
Davey Smith, G. &
Ahman, D. G.
(2001).
Systematic Reviews in Health care: meta-analysis in context.
Second edition.
BMJ publishing Group,
London.
10.1002/9780470693926 Google Scholar
- 26 Elashoff, J. D. (1981). Down with multiple t-tests, Gastroenterology 80, 615–620.
- 27 Elashoff, J. D. (1983). Surviving proportional hazards, Hepatology 3, 1031–1035.
- 28 Ellenberg, S. S. (1984). Special Report: Randomization designs in comparative clinical trials, New England Journal of Medicine 310, 1404–1408.
- 29 Emerson, J. D. & Colditz, G. A. (1983). Use of statistical analysis in the New England Journal of Medicine, New England Journal of Medicine 309, 709–714.
- 30 Emerson, J. D. & Colditz, G. (1992). e of statistical analysis in the New England Journal of Medicine, Medical Uses of Statistics, 2nd Ed. J. C. Bailar & F. Mosteller, eds. NEJM Books, Boston, pp. 45–57.
- 31
Feinstein, A.
(1977).
Clinical Biostatistics.
C.V. Mosby Company,
St Louis.
10.1002/cpt1977224485 Google Scholar
- 32 Fitzpatrick, R., Fletcher, A. F., Gore, S., Jones, D., Spiegelhalter, D. & Cox, D. (1992). Quality of life measures in health care, British Medical Journal 305, 1074–1077, 1145–1148, 1205–1209.
- 33 Fleiss, J. L., Williams, J. B. W. & Dubro, A. F. (1986). The logistic regression analysis of psychiatric data, Journal of Psychiatric Research 20, 195–209.
- 34 Freiman, J. A., Chalmers, T. C., Smith, H. & Kuebler, R. R. (1978). The importance of beta, the type II error and sample size in the design and interpretation of the randomized control trial, New England Journal of Medicine 299, 690–694.
- 35 Gadbury, G. L., Coffey, C. S. & Allison, D. B. (2003). Modern statistics methods for handling missing repeated measurements in obesity trial data: beyond LOCF. Obesity Reviews 4, 175–184.
- 36 Gardner, M. J. & Altman, D. G. (1989). Statistics with Confidence: Confidence Intervals and Statistical Guidelines. British Medical Journal, London.
- 37
Gardner, M. J.,
Machin, D. &
Campbell, M. J.
(1986).
Use of checklists in assessing the statistical content of medical studies,
British Medical Journal
i,
810–812.
10.1136/bmj.292.6523.810 Google Scholar
- 38 Godfrey, K. (1985). Simple linear regression in medical research, New England Journal of Medicine 313, 1629–1636.
- 39 Gore, S. M. & Altman, D. G. (1982). Statistics in Practice. British Medical Association, London.
- 40 Gøtzsche, P. C. (1994). Is there logic in the placebo? Lancet 344, 925–926.
- 41 Grimes, D. A. & Schulz, K. F. (2002). An review of clinical research: the lay of the land. Lancet 359, 57–61.
- 42 Guyatt, G., Jaeschke, R., Heddle, N., Cook, D., Shannon, H. & Walter, S. (1995). Basic statistics for clinicians. 1. Hypothesis-testing; 2. Interpreting study results—confidence intervals; 3. Assessing the effects of treatment—measures of association; 4. Correlation and regression, Canadian Medical Association Journal 152, 27–32, 169–173, 351–357, 497–504.
- 43 Hanley, J. A. & McNeil, B. J. (1982). The meaning and use of the area under a receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve, Radiology 143, 29–36.
- 44 Healy, M. J. R. (1991). Statistics from the Inside: Populations and samples, Archives of Diseases in Childhood 66, 1355–1361.
- 45 Hebert, R. S., Wright, S. M., Dittus, R. S. & Elasy, T. A. (2002). Prominent medical journals often provide insufficient information to assess the validity of studies with negative results. BMC Journal of Negative Results in Biomechanic 1, 1.
- 46 Hill, A. B. (1937). Principles of Medical Statistics. Lancet, London.
- 47 Hill, A. B. & Hill, I. D. (1991). Bradford Hill's Principles of Medical Statistics, 12th Ed. Edward Arnold, London.
- 48 Hills, M. & Armitage, P. (1979). The two-period crossover clinical trial, British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology 8, 7–20.
- 49 Hoffman, J. I. E. (1976). The incorrect use of chi-square analysis for paired data, Clinical and Experimental Immunology 24, 227–229.
- 50 Hokanson, J. A., Luftman, D. J. & Weiss, G. B. (1986). Frequency and diversity of use of statistical techniques in oncology journals, Cancer Treatment Reports 70, 589–594.
- 51 Lilford, R. J. & Braunholtz, D. (1996). The statistical basis of public policy: a paradigm shift is overdue, British Medical Journal 313, 603–607.
- 52 Lilford, R. J., Thornton, J. G. & Braunholtz, D. (1995). Clinical trials and rare diseases: a way out of a conundrum, British Medical Journal 311, 1621–1625.
- 53 Linnet, K. (1985). Precision of sensitivity estimations in diagnostic test evaluations. Power functions for comparisons of sensitivities of two tests, Clinical Chemistry 31, 574–580.
- 54 Makuch, R. W. (1982). Statistical guidelines for medical research reports, Cancer Treatment Reports 66, 217–219.
- 55 Marsh, M. J. & Hawkins, B. S. (1994). Publications from multicentre clinical trials: statistical techniques and accessibility to the reader, Statistics in Medicine 13, 2393–2406.
- 56 May, P. R. A., Yale, C. & Dixon, W. J. (1972; 1973). Assessment of psychiatric outcome: 1. Cross-section analysis; II. Simple Simon analysis; III. Process analysis, Journal of Psychiatric Research 9, 271–284, 285–292; 10, 31–42.
- 57 McGuigan, S. M. (1995). The use of statistics in the British Journal of Psychiatry, British Journal of Psychiatry 167, 683–688.
- 58 Moher, D., Schulz, K. F. & Ahman, D. G., for the CONSORT Group. (2001). The CONSORT statement: revised recommendations for improving the quality of reports of parallel-group randomized trials. Annals of Internal Medicine 134, 657–662.
- 59 Newell, D. J. (1991). A seven-point plan to explain regression to the mean, Australian Journal of Public Health 15, 151.
- 60 Newell, D. & Simpson, J. (1990). Regression to the mean, Medical Journal of Australia 153, 166–168.
- 61 Oxman, A. D., Davis, D. A., Feightner, J. W., Finnie, N. V., Hutchison, B. G., Lusk, S., Macdonald, P. J., Mcauley, R. G. & Sellors, J. W. (1994). Evidence-based care: 1. Setting priorities—how important is this problem; 2. Setting guidelines—how should we manage this problem; 3. Measuring performance—how are we managing this problem; 4. Improving performance—how can we improve the way we manage this problem; 5. Lifelong learning—how can we learn to be more effective, Canadian Medical Association Journal 150, 1249–1254, 1417–1423, 1575–1579, 1793–1796, 1971–1973.
- 62 Peto, R., Pike, M. C., Armitage, P., Breslow, N. E., Cox, D. R., Howard, S. V., Mantel, N., McPherson, K., Peto, J. & Smith, P. G. (1976; 1977). Design and analysis of randomized clinical trials requiring prolonged observation of each patient: I. Introduction and Design; II. Analysis and examples, British Journal of Cancer 34, 585–612; 35, 1–39.
- 63 Pilčík, T. (2003). Statistics in three biomedical journals. Physiological Research 52, 39–43.
- 64 Pope, C. & Mays, N. (1995). Reaching the parts other methods cannot reach: an introduction to qualitative methods in health and health services research, British Medical Journal 311, 42–45.
- 65 Potsdam International Consultation on Meta-Analysis, (1995). Journal of Clinical Epidemiology 48, 1–172.
- 66 Raskob, G. E., Lofthouse, R. N. & Hull, R. D. (1985). Methodological guidelines for clinical trials evaluating new therapeutic approaches in bone and joint surgery, Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery 67, 1294–1297.
- 67 Riddell, B. C., Walter, D. E. & Wells, J. M. (1979). An approach to evaluating reports of research studies, Canadian Journal of Hospital Pharmacy 32, 69–70.
- 68 Ried, M. & Hall, J. C. (1984). Multiple statistical comparisons in nutritional research, American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 40, 183–184.
- 69 Robinson, R. (1993). Economic evaluation and health care: what does it mean? British Medical Journal 307, 670–673.
- 70 Rose, G. & Barker, D. J. P. (1979). Epidemiology for the Uninitiated. British Medical Association, London.
- 71 Ross, O. B. (1951). Use of controls in medical research, Journal of the American Medical Association 145, 72–75.
- 72 Schor, S. & Karten, I. (1965). Statistical evaluation of medical journal manuscripts, Journal of the American Medical Association 195, 145–150.
- 73 Schulz, K. F., Chalmers, I., Hayes, R. J. & Altman, D. G. (1995). Empirical evidence of bias: dimensions of methodological quality associated with estimates of treatment effects in controlled trials, Journal of the American Medical Association 273, 408–412.
- 74 Simpson, J. (1994). Management for Doctors: Doctors and management—why bother?, British Medical Journal 309, 1505–1508.
- 75 Streiner, D. L. (1990). Sample size and power in psychiatric research. Canadian Journal of Psychiatry 35, 616–620.
- 76 Swinscow, T. D. V. (1976). Statistics at Square One. British Medical Association, London.
- 77 Task-Force-on-Design-and-Analysis-Inc and American Dental Association Conference on equivalency and superiority claims for products for gingivitis and periodontitis (1992). Journal of Periodontal Research 27(4), Part 2.
- 78 Tibshirani, R. (1982). A plain man's guide to the proportional hazards model, Clinical and Investigative Medicine 5, 63–68.
- 79 Wald, N. & Cuckle, H. (1989). Reporting the assessment of screening and diagnostic tests, British Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology 96, 389–396.
- 80 Wang Q, & Zhang, B. (1998). Research design and statistical methods in chinese medical journals. Journal of the American Medical Association 280, 283–285.
- 81 White, I. R., Moodie, E., Thompson, S. G. & Croudace, T. (2003). A modelling strategy for the analysis of clinical trials with partly missing longitudinal data. International Journal of Methods in Psychiatric Research 12, 139–150.
- 82 White, S. J. (1979). Statistical errors in papers in the British Journal of Psychiatry, British Journal of Psychiatry 135, 336–342.
- 83 Whiting, P., Rutjes, A. W., Reitsma, J. B., Bossuyt, P. M. & Kleijnen, J. (2003). The development of QUADAS: a tool for the quality assessment of studies of diagnostic accuracy included in systematic reviews. BMC Medical Research Methodology 3(1), 25.
- 84 Williamson, J. W., Goldsmith, P. G. & Colton, T. (1986). The quality of medical literature: an analysis of validation assessments, Medical Uses of Statistics, J. C. Bailar & F. Mosteller eds. NEJM Books, Boston, Chapter 19, pp. 370–391.
- 85
Wright, P. &
Haybittle, J.
(1979).
Design of forms for clinical trials,
British Medical Journal
ii,
529–530,
590–592,
650–651.
10.1136/bmj.2.6189.529 Google Scholar
- 86 Wulff, H. R., Andersen, B., Brandenhoff, P. & Guttler, F. (1987). What do doctors know about statistics?, Statistics in Medicine 6, 3–10.
- 87 Yancey, J. M. (1990). Ten rules for reading clinical research reports, American Journal of Surgery 159, 533–539.
- 88 Yudkin, P. L. & Stratton, I. M. (1996). How to deal with regression to the mean in intervention studies, Lancet 347, 241–243.
- 89 Zelen, M. (1979). A new design for randomized clinical trials, New England Journal of Medicine 300, 1242–1245.
Further Reading
- Epidemiology Work Group of the Interagency Regulatory Liaison Group (1981). Guidelines for documentation of epidemiologic studies, American Journal of Epidemiology 114, 609–618.