Abstract
This article presents a review of the statistical analyses used by authors and published
in The Journal of Foot & Ankle Surgery® from January 2004 to December 2008. Of the 215 articles reviewed, descriptive statistics
were used in 84% and comparative statistics in 68%. The most commonly used comparative
statistical tests were Student t test (30%), analysis of variance (14%), the Mann Whitney U test (Wilcoxon rank sum) test (13%), chi-squared analyses (11%), and Fisher's exact
test (10%). The aim of this investigation was to review the prevalences of various
statistical methods used by foot and ankle surgeons, as reported in The Journal of Foot & Ankle Surgery®, and to serve as a primer of the most common methods used in the analysis of surgical
data and the development of a scientific basis for the practice of foot and ankle
surgery.
Level of Evidence
Keywords
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: July 12, 2010
Footnotes
Financial disclosure: None reported.
Conflict of interest: None reported.
Identification
Copyright
© 2010 American College of Foot and Ankle Surgeons. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
