Essentials of Statistics in Dental Research: Part 2.

The Part 1 of essentials of statistics in dental research covered topics on statistical concepts that are often mentioned in checklist of many peer-review journals including, study design, hypothesis testing, significance level and confidence interval, effect size, and sample size and power. The Part 2 of the series covers another set of important topics in dental statistics including, levels of measurements, tests of normality, and tests of statistical significance. Appropriate use of statistical methods is becoming increasingly important in dental research as many well-established journals have Statistical Committee to examine the methods used in analyzing data. The aim of this paper was to explain how to select the correct statistical test and outline some of the most commonly used statistical tests found in the dental literature.

Essentials of Statistics in Dental Research: Part 1.

Dental professionals review articles in scientific dental journals to be informed about progress in the field and to remain up to date in the dental literature. As a general rule, knowing the basic statistical concepts such as study design, hypothesis testing, confidence interval, significance level, effect size, and sample size and power can help readers to better understand the whole concept of an article. Reviews of statistical methodology in published papers of well-established dental journals concluded that the majority of the papers contained statistical errors. Inappropriate use of statistical methods may lead to incorrect conclusions and a waste of valuable resources. The aim of this paper is to provide an overview on some implications of the statistical concepts and recommendations for avoiding statistical errors in dental research.