Research design and statistical procedures used in the Journal of Family Practice

To determine whether articles published in The Journal of Family Practice contain statistical content that is easily understood by the general reader, all original articles published during a two-year period were reviewed to determine the frequency of use of different research designs and statistical procedures. Eighty-eight percent of the articles used the cross-sectional design. No statistical methods were reported in 46 percent of the articles; 13 percent reported descriptive statistics only. The chi-square statistic and t test were the most commonly used statistical procedures. Readers of The Journal of Family Practice, therefore, needed only an elementary knowledge of statistics to understand the statistical content of three quarters of the original articles.