Dental Statistics Made Easy

Description

This essential textbook presents the basics of dental statistics in an accessible way, combining explanation in non-technical language with key messages, practical examples, suggestions for furtherreading and exercises complete with detailed solutions. There is an emphasis on the principles and application of statistics without the use of algebra.

The statistical material is strongly rooted in practical examples drawn from a wide range of journal articles representing both dental health care delivery and clinical dentistry. The perspective isinternational, with papers drawn from a variety of settings around the world. Many articles are recent and report contemporary developments in dental care.

The intended audience includes dental students and practitioners, those engaged in dental research and other health care professionals. For students and tutors, it covers the undergraduatecurriculum, and the exercises and solutions make it ideal for course use. For practitioners and researchers it provides the first principles of study design, accessing the dental literature, and thepreparation and publication of original dental research.

Features

• A new chapteronevidence-baseddentistrycomplementingtheemphasisonthe dental literature.
• Anaccessibleapproachusingminimalmathematics.
• Manypracticalexamplesdrawnfromthe dental literature.
• A widerange of exercises (multiplechoice, short answerquestions, and longerproblems).

Contents

Preface

Preface to the second edition

Preface to the first edition

Introduction

Planning a study

Types of study in dental research

Sampling

Randomised controlled trials

Ethical considerations

The Normal distribution

Diagnostic tests

Sampling variation

Introduction to hypothesis tests

Comparing two means

Dealing with proportions and categorical data

Comparing several means

Regression, correlation and agreement

Non-Normally distributed data

The choice of sample size

Evidence based dentistry

Statistical refereeing

Appendix

Solutions to exercises

Index

Author(s) Bio

Nigel Smeeton is a Social Statistician at the Centre for Research in Primary and Community Care, University of Hertfordshire, and Visiting Lecturer in the Division of Imaging Sciences andBiomedical Engineering at King’s College London. For more than twenty years, he has taught statistics to undergraduate dental and medical students and is currently engaged in the postgraduateteaching of health service staff. His academic work has involved the application of statistical methods to research in stroke, asthma, psychiatry, and adolescent health and behaviour. He has a particular interest in non-parametric statistics, and is co-author of the text Applied Nonparametric Statistical Methods, published by CRC Press.