REVIEW
How to Report Statistics in Medicine
Lang TA, Secic M.
367 pages.
Philadelphia: ACP; 1997.
$35 (ACP Members), $40 (Nonmembers). ISBN 0943126444. Order phone (800) 523-1546x2600 or (215) 351-2600. (For ordering information, see ACP's Resources for Internists Catalog.)
Field of Medicine: Medical writing & communicating
Format: Softcover book.
Audience: Authors of original research in medicine, peer-reviewers, or editors to whom these manuscripts are submitted.
Purpose: "To provide a set of detailed, comprehensive, and understandable guidelines for reporting statistical information in medicine."
Content: This book is divided into four sections. The first and most important provides information on how to report statistics based on the type of study performed. The second is a guide to statistical terms and tests. The third is an unannotated, referenced list of published guidelines. The fourth section contains several appendices.
Highlights: This book is easy to refer to when trying to find the information you need. Although it doesn't replace a biostatician or a thorough understanding of a subject when conducting research, it allows quick scanning of a topic, picking up some tips on how to present data and check your work, while highlighting potential problems and leading the reader via well-referenced sources to more in-depth review. It also makes excellent use of graphs, and has nice examples of common tests, their application, and their presentation.
Limitations: Assumes some knowledge of biostatistics. It is not a biostatistics textbook (nor does it claim to be) and hence requires either a basic understanding of the topics or a textbook of biostatistics at hand. Some would venture that a good biostatistics textbook would render this book superfluous.
Context: The field of biostatistics is flooded with textbooks. Yet none I have found do what this book so effectively does—help you actually apply statistics to your data, confident that your are using the right test and presenting the data effectively.
Commentary: Although this book is not for everyone's personal medical library, it fills an important niche for prolific medical writers and serves as an excellent reference for anyone trying to publish medical research (or simply trying to finish a medical school thesis). One major strength is that it is very current, even citing references from 1997 in its "Checklist for Reporting Clinical Trials." Every medical school library should have a copy in the reference section.
Reviewer: Nirav R. Shah, MD-MPH candidate, Yale University School of
Medicine, New Haven, Connecticut.
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