Evaluation of statistical packages for suitability for use by clinical investigators in medicine

With the increased availability of personal computers and statistical software packages, it is inevitable that there will be increasing attempts by clinical investigators to perform data management and statistical analysis. Reviews of statistical packages are abundant in computer and statistical journals. However the majority of them were not written for clinical investigators in medicine. This paper presents an analytic approach to evaluate the suitability of statistical packages for use by clinical investigators for data-management and preliminary statistical-analysis purposes. The evaluation scheme addresses five areas of concern: availability of data-management features; availability of basic statistical-analysis features; ease of use; documentation; and quality of programs. Among six statistical packages reviewed by this process, CRISP is recommended as the most suitable package for clinical investigators to use for data-management and preliminary statistical-analysis purposes.