Survey of dental education in biostatistics

PLEASE NOTE: This work is protected by copyright. Downloading is restricted to the BU community: please click Download and log in with a valid BU account to access. If you are the author of this work and would like to make it publicly available, please contact open-help@bu.edu.Thesis (MSD) --Boston University, Henry M. Goldman School of Dental Medicine, 2011 (Department of Dental Public Health).Includes bibliographic references: leaves 54-55.Objectives: To assess attitude, confidence and knowledge of biostatistics methods of a group of post-doctoral dental students and post-graduate students enrolled in a biostatistics course. Also, to evaluate agreement between biostatistical methods used in the survey instrument and a summarization of commonly used statistical methods selected from dental literature articles. Methods: Group administration of a validated survey of a convenient sample of post-doctoral Boston University School of Dental Medicine students and post-graduate students. Forty-three students enrolled in a Biostatistics course responded (100% response rate). For comparison purposes of common published statistical methods, six journals were selected: Journal of American Dental Association, American Journal of Public Health, Journal of Dental Research, Journal of Dental Education, Journal of Public Health Dentistry and Community Dentistry and Oral Epidemiology. Five hundred and forty published articles were reviewed. The statistical methods reported in the articles were counted and categorized. Univariate, bivariate and logistic multivariate analyses were performed in assessing the type and number of statistical methods reported. Results: The mean and standard deviation in knowledge questions were 6.7[plus or minus]2.7 (out of 20). The univariate analysis indicated that students with previous training in biostatistics, with higher self-perceived confidence in biostatistics and knowledge in excel programming had significantly higher scores in knowledge questions. The majority of the students had a positive attitude toward biostatistics. Yet, they reported little to no self-confidence in interpreting literature results. The biosatistical concepts incorporated in the used questionnaire were commonly used in the selected dental literature except for cox-proportional hazard and Kaplan-Meier analysis. Conclusion: The study showed less than adequate understanding of commonly used biostatistical methods. This would lead to partial ability to interpret results presented in the literature correctly