Meeting the assumptions of statistical tests: an important and often forgotten step to reporting valid results - Respiratory Research & Clinical Practice

Meeting the assumptions of statistical tests: an important and often forgotten step to reporting valid results |

PRACTICAL SCENARIO

A secondary analysis of a randomized controlled trial was conducted to evaluate whether atopic status was associated with asthma severity and asthma control among inner-city adolescents in the USA. To answer this question, the authors evaluated the differences between atopic and non-atopic patients, in terms of asthma control and asthma severity scores, using a t-test, and reported the results as means ± SDs. The results showed that the atopic patients, when compared with non-atopic patients, had similar asthma control scores (18.1 ± 4.2 vs. 18.2 ± 3.7; p = 0.95) but worse asthma severity scores (5.5 ± 2.9 vs. 4.7 ± 2.8; p = 0.04).

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