Statistical trends in family medicine journals

This study proposed a desirable direction for the future development of the Korean Journal of Family Medicine (KJFM) by comparing with the overseas SCI journals, Family Medicine (FM) and The Journal of Family Practice (JFP) based on the statistical viewpoints.

All of the original articles published in KJFM from January 1981 to June 2011, FM from January 1998 to June 2011, and JFP from January 1978 to June 2011, were reviewed and compared in terms of content, data size, research design, and statistical method.

Of 3,226 total original articles, KJFM published 1,549, FM 322, and JFP 1,355, respectively. Both JFP and KJFM mainly focused on biomedical topics (67.2% and 61.7%), while FM focused on education (55.9%). Most of the studies in three journals used the data size of between 100 to 300 cases. The most frequently used research design was cross-sectional, FM 66.8%, JFP 58.4%, and KJFM 72.4%, respectively. The statistical methods in KJFM were gradually diversified.

The quality of the original articles in KJFM has been improved over the years, but still has conducted based on the relatively weak research designs. Under the circumstances that the higher ranked SCI journals demand the prospective design and large size of data, and most researchers in Korea could not use the large scaled prospective data, we need to collaborate to accumulate the small sized data sets and try to make a registry. More refined statistical method such as a propensity score matching analysis for retrospective data could be an alternative.