A comparative cross-sectional assessment of statistical knowledge of faculty across five health science disciplines

Abstract

Introduction: The purpose of this study was to compare statistical knowledge of health science faculty across accredited schools of dentistry, medicine, nursing, pharmacy, and public health. Methods: A probability sample of schools was selected, and all faculty at each selected school were invited to participate in an online statistical knowledge assessment that covered fundamental topics including randomization, study design, statistical power, confidence intervals, multiple testing, standard error, regression outcome, and odds ratio. Results: A total of 708 faculty from 102 schools participated. The overall response rate was 6.5%. Most (94.2%) faculty reported reading the peer-reviewed health-related literature. Respondents answered 66.2% of questions correctly across all questions and disciplines. Public health had the highest performance (80.7%) and dentistry the lowest (53.3%). Conclusions: Knowledge of statistics is essential for critically evaluating evidence and understanding the health literature. These study results identify a gap in knowledge by educators tasked with training the next generation of health science professionals. Recommendations for addressing this gap are provided.