How to Crack the Health Statistics Code

If the usual approaches to health statistics leave you baffled or on the brink of despair, this book is for you. Even if you shy away from doing research yourself, you can’t escape statistics in medicine, nursing, and other health fields. Your decisions about clinical practice are often based on research articles that are crammed with statistics. Unfortunately, statistics in the health literature are frequently incorrect or misleading. Even when statistics are correct, you’ll have a hard time making sense of many articles in your field if you don’t understand the statistics. What’s different about this book? It’s a practical, user-friendly guide that teaches you how to crack the health statistics code by showing you how to interpret and apply statistics correctly. Statistical methods are presented in an innovative way that makes it easier to select and interpret statistical methods correctly. Once you learn the material in this book, you can easily decode even complicated statistics descriptions. Practical applications of statistical procedures are emphasized, not formulas. Chapter titles focus on the goals of statistical methods, not mathematical properties. Nonparametric statistical procedures are presented next to their corresponding parametric procedures, so you can make intelligent choices between them. The focus is on selecting appropriate statistical procedures, interpreting statistical results correctly, and determining whether statistical procedures described in the health literature were used correctly. You can conquer health statistics, and this book will enable you to do it.