Medical Statistics - A Textbook for the Health Sciences - 5th Edition

The 5th edition of this popular introduction to statistics for the medical and health sciences has undergone a significant revision, with several new chapters added and examples refreshed throughout the book. Yet it retains its central philosophy to explain medical statistics with as little technical detail as possible, making it accessible to a wide audience.
 

Helpful multi-choice exercises are included at the end of each chapter, with answers provided at the end of the book. Each analysis technique is carefully explained and the mathematics kept to minimum. Written in a style suitable for statisticians and clinicians alike, this edition features many real and original examples, taken from the authors' combined many years' experience of designing and analysing clinical trials and teaching statistics.
 

Students of the health sciences, such as medicine, nursing, dentistry, physiotherapy, occupational therapy, and radiography should find the book useful, with examples relevant to their disciplines. The aim of training courses in medical statistics pertinent to these areas is not to turn the students into medical statisticians but rather to help them interpret the published scientific literature and appreciate how to design studies and analyse data arising from their own projects. However, the reader who is about to design their own study and collect, analyse and report on their own data will benefit from a clearly written book on the subject which provides practical guidance to such issues.
 

The practical guidance provided by this book will be of use to professionals working in and/or managing clinical trials, in academic, public health, government and industry settings, particularly medical statisticians, clinicians, trial co-ordinators. Its practical approach will appeal to applied statisticians and biomedical researchers, in particular those in the biopharmaceutical industry, medical and public health organisations.

List of contents

Preface xi
 
1 Uses and Abuses of Medical Statistics 1
 
1.1 Introduction 2
 
1.2 Why Use Statistics? 2
 
1.3 Statistics is About Common Sense and Good Design 3
 
1.4 How a Statistician Can Help 5
 
2 Displaying and Summarising Data 9
 
2.1 Types of Data 10
 
2.2 Summarising Categorical Data 13
 
2.3 Displaying Categorical Data 15
 
2.4 Summarising Continuous Data 17
 
2.5 Displaying Continuous Data 24
 
2.6 Within-Subject Variability 28
 
2.7 Presentation 30
 
2.8 Points When Reading the Literature 31
 
2.9 Technical Details 32
 
2.10 Exercises 33
 
3 Summary Measures for Binary Data 37
 
3.1 Summarising Binary and Categorical Data 38
 
3.2 Points When Reading the Literature 46
 
3.3 Exercises 46
 
4 Probability and Distributions 49
 
4.1 Types of Probability 50
 
4.2 The Binomial Distribution 54
 
4.3 The Poisson Distribution 55
 
4.4 Probability for Continuous Outcomes 57
 
4.5 The Normal Distribution 58
 
4.6 Reference Ranges 63
 
4.7 Other Distributions 64
 
4.8 Points When Reading the Literature 66
 
4.9 Technical Section 66
 
4.10 Exercises 67
 
5 Populations, Samples, Standard Errors and Confidence Intervals 71
 
5.1 Populations 72
 
5.2 Samples 73
 
5.3 The Standard Error 74
 
5.4 The Central Limit Theorem 75
 
5.5 Standard Errors for Proportions and Rates 77
 
5.6 Standard Error of Differences 79
 
5.7 Confidence Intervals for an Estimate 80
 
5.8 Confidence Intervals for Differences 83
 
5.9 Points When Reading the Literature 84
 
5.10 Technical Details 85
 
5.11 Exercises 86
 
6 Hypothesis Testing, P-values and Statistical Inference 91
 
6.1 Introduction 92
 
6.2 The Null Hypothesis 92
 
6.3 The Main Steps in Hypothesis Testing 94
 
6.4 Using Your P-value to Make a Decision About Whether to Reject, or Not Reject, Your Null Hypothesis 96
 
6.5 Statistical Power 99
 
6.6 One-sided and Two-sided Tests 101
 
6.7 Confidence Intervals (CIs) 101
 
6.8 Large Sample Tests for Two Independent Means or Proportions 104
 
6.9 Issues with P-values 107
 
6.10 Points When Reading the Literature 108
 
6.11 Exercises 108
 
7 Comparing Two or More Groups with Continuous Data 111
 
7.1 Introduction 112
 
7.2 Comparison of Two Groups of Paired Observations - Continuous Outcomes 113
 
7.3 Comparison of Two Independent Groups - Continuous Outcomes 119
 
7.4 Comparing More than Two Groups 127
 
7.5 Non-Normal Distributions 130
 
7.6 Degrees of Freedom 131
 
7.7 Points When Reading the Literature 132
 
7.8 Technical Details 132
 
7.9 Exercises 140
 
8 Comparing Groups of Binary and Categorical Data 145
 
8.1 Introduction 146
 
8.2 Comparison of Two Independent Groups - Binary Outcomes 146
 
8.3 Comparing Risks 151
 
8.4 Comparison of Two Groups of Paired Observations - Categorical Outcomes 152
 
8.5 Degrees of Freedom 153
 
8.6 Points When Reading the Literature 154
 
8.7 Technical Details 154
 
8.8 Exercises 160
 
9 Correlation and Linear Regression 163
 
9.1 Introduction 164
 
9.2 Correlation 165
 
9.3 Linear Regression 171
 
9.4 Comparison of Assumptions Between Correlation and Regression 178
 
9.5 Multiple Regression 179
 
9.6 Correlation is not Causation 181

About the author

STEPHEN J. WALTERS is Professor of Medical Statistics and Clinical Trials in the School of Health and Related Research (ScHARR) at the University of Sheffield, UK. Stephen is a prolific researcher and writer, including the popular textbooks How to Display Data and How to Design, Analyse and Report Cluster Randomised Trials in Medicine and Health Related Research. He is a National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Senior Investigator, and has developed several courses on teaching medical statistics to medical and health science students, clinicians and allied health professionals. MICHAEL J. CAMPBELL is Emeritus Professor of Medical Statistics in the School of Health and Related Research (ScHARR) at the University of Sheffield, UK. Mike is a leading researcher in medical statistics and clinical trials with a national and international reputation. A prolific writer, Mike has written many best-selling textbooks on medical statistics and clinical trials including: Statistics at Square One, Statistics at Square Two, Sample Size Tables for Clinical Studies, and How to Design, Analyse and Report Cluster Randomised Trials in Medicine and Health Related Research. DAVID MACHIN is Emeritus Professor of Medical Statistics in the School of Health and Related Research (ScHARR) at the University of Sheffield, UK. He was Foundation Director of the National Medical Research Council, Clinical Trials and Epidemiology Research Unit, Singapore, and Head of the MRC Cancer Trials Office, Cambridge, UK. He has published more than 250 peer reviewed articles, and several books on a wide variety of topics in statistics and medicine. His earlier experience included posts at the Universities of Wales, Leeds, Stirling, Southampton and Sheffield, a period with the European Organisation for Research and Treatment of Cancer in Brussels, Belgium, and at the World Health Organization in Geneva, Switzerland.

Product details

• Authors: Michael J Campbell, Michael J. Campbell, Michael J. (University of Southampton) Campbell, Dav Machin, David Machin, David (Medical Research Council Cancer Trials Office Machin, S. J. Walters, Stephen J Walters, Stephen J. Walters, Stephen J. (University of Sheffield Walters
• Publisher: Wiley, John and Sons Ltd
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 04.02.2021
• EAN: 9781119423645
• ISBN: 978-1-119-42364-5
• No. of pages: 448
• Subject: Natural sciences, medicine, IT, technology > Medicine > Clinical medicine