An update of Statistical methods in the journal
Statistical analysis used in quantitative research extensively as well as in qualitative research. All top impact factor journals give more emphasis on correct statistical analysis. Moreover sophisticated statistical methods are increasing over time which is challenging for new clinician.
According to New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), one of the old and elite journals which was established in 1812,
" A reader who is conversant with descriptive statistics (percentages, means, and standard deviations) has statistical access to 58% of the articles. Understanding t-tests increases this access to 67%. The addition of contingency tables gives statistical access to 73% of the articles"Familiarity of each additional statistical tools also increase the accessible article percentages. But the matter of fact that original research article use more statistical tools then appeared as final manuscript. Sometimes it need not necessary to show all the analysis in the main manuscript rather than just mentioned in the text or added in the appendix.
In medical research longitudinal design make heavier use of statistical methods than that of in cross-sectional design.
NEJM published several papers as same name "Statistical methods in the journal" on the basis of articles of their journal's different volumes in 1978-79, 1989, 2004-05, 2015.
According to 2005 article statistical contents statistics summary shown in the following table. In the table “accumulation by article” made use of a hierarchical categorization of methods of increasing complexity, as outlined by Emerson and Colditz.
For example, the entry for contingency tables shows that only 47 articles (15%) used no methods beyond descriptive statistics, used t-tests, and used contingency tables. Similarly, if a reader had knowledge of t-tests, contingency tables, nonparametric tests, epidemiological statistics, Pearson’s correlation, simple linear regression, analysis of variance, transformations, and nonparametric correlation (topics typically included in introductory statistics courses), then 21% of the articles would be accessible, as defined by Emerson and Colditz. The biggest jumps in the “accumulation by article” percentage related to knowledge of multiple regression, power, repeated-measures analysis, and missing-data methods.
Source: Statistical Methods in the Journal, NEJM, 2005
More than half of the articles use sophisticated statistical methods such as multiple regression or survival analysis.
Figure 1 shows the latest update of the different statistical methods used in the journals
The average number of methods used per article was 1.9 in 1978–1979, 2.7 in 1989, 4.2 in 2004-2005 and 6.1 in 2015 .
Now statistical tools like power analysis, epidemiological statistics, Nonparametric tests, Multiway tables, transformation, adjustment and standardization show sharp rise when use of multiple regression, multiple comparison, no statistical methods drop significantly and other methods show minimal fluctuations from previous studies.In summary there was a continued trend toward more advanced and diversified statistical tools.
Reference:
1.2. Horton JN, Switzer SS. Statistical methods in the journal, N Engl J Med 2005;353;18
3. Sato Y, Gosho M, Nagashima k, Takahashi S, Ware JH, Laird NM, Statistical Methods in the Journal — An Update, N Engl J Med 2017;376;11
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