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Statistics 101

Statistics 101 Advances in Health Sciences Education (2019) 24:637–642 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10459-019-09915-3 EDITORIAL Geoff Norman © Springer Nature B.V. 2019 Over the last few weeks, I have encountered several situations that demanded a serious look at the logic of statistics, a subject we all (well, most) anguished through in our near or distant past. Here are 3 apparently disparate anecdotes: 1. We recently submitted a paper to an anatomy journal. The paper showed a large and highly significant difference in learning resulting from different presentation formats. One reviewer was highly critical because “There is not [sic] power analysis presented. Should be included as part of experi- mental design.” 2. Last week I rejected two papers in a 1 h period for precisely the same reason. Both involved a survey with multiple items. Authors correlated responses to each item to other measures such as personality, demographics, attitude to social situations. Typically there were 20–40 items in the questionnaire, resulting in somewhere between 100 and 200 tests. Within 24 h, a colleague sent me a recently published paper in which the authors looked at differences on a survey related to a number of demographic variables, based on an item by item analysis on a test of about 40 http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Advances in Health Sciences Education Springer Journals

Statistics 101

Norman, Geoff
Advances in Health Sciences Education , Volume 24 (4) – Oct 2, 2019
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Publisher
Springer Journals
Copyright
Copyright © 2019 by Springer Nature B.V.
Subject
Education; Medical Education
ISSN
1382-4996
eISSN
1573-1677
DOI
10.1007/s10459-019-09915-3
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

Advances in Health Sciences Education (2019) 24:637–642 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10459-019-09915-3 EDITORIAL Geoff Norman © Springer Nature B.V. 2019 Over the last few weeks, I have encountered several situations that demanded a serious look at the logic of statistics, a subject we all (well, most) anguished through in our near or distant past. Here are 3 apparently disparate anecdotes: 1. We recently submitted a paper to an anatomy journal. The paper showed a large and highly significant difference in learning resulting from different presentation formats. One reviewer was highly critical because “There is not [sic] power analysis presented. Should be included as part of experi- mental design.” 2. Last week I rejected two papers in a 1 h period for precisely the same reason. Both involved a survey with multiple items. Authors correlated responses to each item to other measures such as personality, demographics, attitude to social situations. Typically there were 20–40 items in the questionnaire, resulting in somewhere between 100 and 200 tests. Within 24 h, a colleague sent me a recently published paper in which the authors looked at differences on a survey related to a number of demographic variables, based on an item by item analysis on a test of about 40

Journal

Advances in Health Sciences Education – Springer Journals

Published: Oct 2, 2019

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