KARACHI: Pakistan Association of Medical Editors (PAME) in collaboration with NICH and EMAME organized the first workshop on basic statistics for medical editors at National Institute of Child Health on January 21st 2012. About a dozen participants attended. The initiative to organize such a workshop was taken by Dr. Jamshed Akhtar General Secretary PAME and Editor of JCPSP who deserve to be commended and it all went very well. Prof. Nazeer Khan Vice President of Eastern Mediterranean Association of Medical Editors (EMAME) who is also Professor of Biostatistics at Dow University of Health Sciences (DUHS) besides being Editor of JDUHS and his team did a commendable job. They made their presentations very simple, easy to understand hence were able to convey the message effectively. Dr. Maqbool H. Jafary President of EMAME was also present on this occasion.
Dr. Jamshed Akhtar the moving spirit behind this academic activity in his introductory remarks highlighted the importance of editors knowing basic statistics and said that it is essential that the editors should know the basics of statistics since many of them do not have the support of full time or even part time statisticians. Hence the editors should be able to identify if there are any major deficiencies and the manuscripts needs to be sent to a statistician for proper evaluation. Keeping this in view, we have requested Prof. Nazeer Khan to cover these basics in two to three lectures. As editors, we should know the concepts. It is also important to have a statistician in the Editorial Board, he remarked.
Ms. Mehvish Hussain was the first speaker. She defined statistics as a methodology used in health sciences. Data is collection of facts and figures. It can be qualitative or quantitative data the difference is that quantitative data is measurable. Data can be presented in tales, graphs and charts. During the discussion it was pointed out that on the monitor these colourful graphs, charts might look very impressive but since most of the journals carry black and white figures, illustrations due to cost constraints, hence the authors should keep this in mind while preparing and submitting these data in graphs and charts. Talking about mean, mode and median, it was stated that while Mean is the average number, Mode signifies the most frequent number and Midean is the most middle values in the given data.
Prof. Nazeer Khan in his excellent presentation covered various sampling techniques and talked abut simple random sampling, random sampling in which each subject has equal chance of being selected. He then referred to convenience sampling, quota sampling, stratified sampling, systematic random sampling and cluster random sampling. These are some of the techniques which are used while collecting data. Pure epidemiological community based house hold surveys and studies are very rare in Pakistan. On the contrary most of the studies are hospital based which cannot give the exact figure of prevalence though it does show some trend.
Mr. Adnan Ali spoke about how to determine the sample size. He was of the view that what would be an ideal sample size for a synopsis would be determined by the statistician who must be consulted before initiating the study. This sample should be able to realistically answer the study question. Study design should also be taken into consideration and it must be noted that there are enough patients of that particular disease during the study period to finalize the research project. Various software’s, he said, are available on the net which help in selection of sample size and Openipi.com is one of them. Prof. Nazeer Khan in his next presentation discussed which test should be used in different studies.
Dr. Jamshed Akhtar had made excellent arrangements for the workshop and second part of the workshop is planned to be organized after some time.