A survey of abstracts of high-impact clinical journals indicated most statistical methods presented are summary statistics

Objectives: To assess what statistical methods are commonly used in high-impact clinical research and how they are presented in abstracts of articles published in high-impact medical journals. Study Design and Setting: A cross-sectional survey of abstracts of original articles published in July 2003 in four high-impact medical journals was conducted. The primary outcome was the distribution of statistical methods used in study results presented in the abstract of articles. Results: Seventy articles met inclusion criteria. One hundred twenty-five unique statistical method presentations were analyzed. Sixty-eight percent of statistical methods used summary statistics, and 27.2% used regression analysis. When summary statistics were used, clinical evidence was presented with a P-value or confidence interval (CI) in 51.8% of statistical methods compared to 72.5% when summary statistics were not used (P = 0.0282). Clinical evidence was presented verbally in 7.1% of statistical methods when summary statistics were used and in 20.0% when summary statistics were not used (P = 0.0323). Conclusions: Summary statistics are the most frequently used statistical method to generate high-impact clinical evidence presented in the abstract of a medical article. Evidence described by summary statistics is significantly associated with less frequent reporting of a P-value or CI, and less frequent verbal presentations. (C) 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.