TY - CHAP M1 - Book, Section TI - Descriptive Statistics A1 - Portney, Leslie G. A1 - Watkins, Mary P. PY - 2017 T2 - Foundations of Clinical Research: Applications to Practice, 3e AB - In the investigation of most clinical research questions, some form of quantitative data will be collected. Initially these data exist in raw form, which means that they are nothing more than a compilation of numbers representing empirical observations from a group of individuals. For these data to be useful as measures of group performance, they must be organized, summarized, and analyzed, so that their meaning can be communicated. These are the functions of the branch of mathematics called statistics. Descriptive statistics are used to characterize the shape, central tendency, and variability within a set of data, often with the intent to describe a population. Measures of population characteristics are called parameters. A descriptive index computed from sample data is called a statistic. When researchers generalize sample data to populations, they use statistics to estimate population parameters. In this chapter we introduce the basic elements of statistical analysis for describing quantitative data. SN - PB - McGraw-Hill Education CY - New York, NY Y2 - 2024/11/09 UR - fadavispt.mhmedical.com/content.aspx?aid=1138251709 ER -