Medical Biostatistics
Introduction
Prof. Amani Waheed(MD)
Community Medicine dept.,
Faculty of Medicine,
Sues Canal University
Objectives
By this cession , the student will be able to
- Clarify the importance of biostatistics in
medical field and researches.
- Identify the variables and their types
- Identify the measuring scales and their types
- Define intermediate variables
- Define confounding variable
- Deal with confounders
Questions to be answer
What is meant by Statistics?
What is meant by
Biostatistics?
What is the importance of
studying Biostatistics?
Statistics is a branch of applied
mathematics that deals with collection,
organization, summarization, analysis, and
interpretation of numerical information
from data. Statistics helps people make
decisions when faced with uncertainty.
When the data being analyzed are derived
from the biological sciences and
medicine, we use the term
biostatistics.
Biostatistics and Clinical Research
Biostatistics methods used to provide formal
accounting for sources of variability in different clinical
situations.
It helps in commenting reasonable and precise
inferences from the gathered information.
It enables the collection, analyzing, summarizing,
presenting and interpreting data to find application in
various field like Epidemiology and Clinical trials
Importance of Biostatistics in
Researches
ProtocolDevelopment
Data management
Study Implementation
Study Monitoring
Data Analysis
Reports or Manuscript writing
Carter, Scheaffer, and Marks (1986) stated
that:
“Statistics is unique among academic disciplines
in that statistical thought is needed at every stage
of virtually all research investigations including
planning the study,
selecting the sample,
managing the data, and
interpreting the results.
Cont’d
Clinical and statistical reasoning are both crucial to progress in
medicine.
Clinical researchers must generalize from the few to many and
combine empirical evidence with theory..
In both medical and statistical sciences, empirical knowledge is
generated from observations and data.
Medical theory is based upon established biology and
hypotheses. Statistical theory is derived from mathematical and
probabilistic models.
To establish a hypothesis requires both a theoretical basis in
biology and statistical support for the hypothesis.
Statistics
Statistics
can be divided into:
descriptive statistics and
inferential statistics.
Descriptive statistics give a summary
about the sample being studied without
drawing any inferences based on
probability theory
Statistics
Statistics
Experimental
Descriptive Design Inferential
Hypothesis
Graphical Numerical Estimation
Testing
Data and Information
Information is the set of data that has
already been processed, analyzed, and
structured in a meaningful way to become
useful.
Once data is processed and gains
relevance, it becomes information that is
fully reliable, certain, and useful.
Data, Information and Knowledge
Variables
Def.
A variable is any quantity that varies. Any
attribute, phenomenon or event that can have
different values.
A variable is an essential component of any
statistical data.
Examples
- Gender may be male or female
- Marital Status may be single, married, divorced or
widowed
- Age
So, a variable can be any characteristic that
differs from person to person
These characteristics are called attributes
The value of a variable is the number or
descriptor that applies to a particular person,
such as 65 Kg female and married.
The value may be:
Numeric or
Categorical (Descriptive)
The type of values influence the way in which
the variables can be summarized. Variables
can be classified into one of four types,
depending on the type of scale used to
characterize their values
Types of variables
1-Quantitative (numeric):
(a) Continuous: e.g. height, weight,
(b) Discrete: e.g. number of children, no of
RBCs, etc.
2-Qualitative (categorical):
(a) Ordinal: e.g. level of education, social
classes, etc.
(b) Nominal: e.g. gender, blood group,
marital status
may be Dichotomous e.g. gender, death
Scale of Measurment
- Nominal Scale
- Ordinal Scale
- Interval Scale
- Interval Ratio Scale
1-Nominal Scale: It is a qualitative scale. These data do not
represent an amount or quantity (e.g., marital status, gender)
2 –Ordinal Scale: It is a qualitative scale. These data
represent an ordered series of relationship (e.g., level of
education)
3 –Interval Scale : It is a quantitative scale. These data is
measured on an interval scale having an equal units but an
arbitrary zero point needed (e. g., date of birth, temp in
Fahrenheit)
Difference between variables are meaningful but ratio are not
4 – Interval Ratio Scale: It is a quantitative scale.
Variables such as weight for which we can compare
meaningfully one weight versus another (say, 100 Kg is twice
Assignment 1.1
For each of the variables listed below
identify what type of variable it is.
Blood Glucose level
Blood Pressure
Residence
Assignment 1.2.
Foreach of the variables listed below
identify what type of scale of variable
measurement is
1- date of diagnosis
2- gender
3- highest blood lead level
Assignment 1.3.
In Dermatology out patient clinc , patients
came complaining of itching, their diagnois
were urticarial lesions with different severity.
What are the scale of measurements of this
clinical situation regarding severity and
numbers of lesions?
Derived data
We may encounter a number of other types of data in
the medical field. These include:
Percentages-These may arise when considering
improvements in patients following treatment, ِِِ
e.g. a patient‘s lung function (forced expiratory volume
in 1 second, FEW) may increase by 24% following
treatment with a new drug.
In this case, it is the level of improvement, rather than
the absolute value, which is of interest.
Ratios or quotients -Occasionally you may
encounter the ratio or quotient of two variables.
For example,
body mass index (BMI), calculated as an individual's weight (kg)
divided by his/her height squared (m2) is often used to
assess whether he/she is over- or under-weight.
Rates-Disease rates, in which the number of disease
events is divided by the time period under consideration,
are common in epidemiological studies.
Scores - use an arbitrary value, i.e. a score,
when we cannot measure a quantity.
For example, a series of responses to questions on quality of life
may be summed to give some overall quality of life score on
each individual
Assignment 1.4.
A survey was done among 1000 students to measure the
prevalence of obesity. 620 students were females. The
prevalence was 40%. 300 female students were obese.
What is the type of variables in the above situation?
What is the percentage of males in the sample?
What is the ratio between males and females in the sample?
Calculate the prevalence of obesity among male students.