Biostatistics Collaboration Unit, Yonsei University College of Medicine, Seoul, Korea
© 2025 Kosin University College of Medicine.
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Conflicts of interest
No potential conflict of interest relevant to this article was reported.
Funding
None.
Author contributions
Conceptualization: HSL. Data curation: HJY. Formal analysis: HJY. Investigation: HSL. Methodology: HSL, HJY. Supervision: HSL. Visualization: HJY. Writing – original draft: HJY. Writing – review & editing: HSL, HJY. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
Goal of analysis | Statistical methods |
|
---|---|---|
Normally distributed | Not normally distributed | |
Comparison of means/medians between two independent groups (categorical and continuous) | Independent two-sample t-test: bar graph | Wilcoxon rank sum test (Mann-Whitney test): box plot |
Comparison of means/medians between two dependent (paired) groups (categorical and continuous) | Paired t-test: bar graph | Wilcoxon signed-rank test: box plot |
Comparison of means/medians between two independent groups (categorical and continuous) | Analysis of variance (Bonferroni): bar graph | Kruskal-Wallis test: box plot |
Correlation between two continuous variables (continuous and continuous) | Pearson correlation: scatter plot | Spearman correlation: scatter plot |
Association between two independent nominal variables (categorical and categorical) | Chi-square test (Fisher exact test): bar graph | Chi-square test (Fisher exact test): bar graph |
Association between two dependent (paired) nominal variables (categorical and categorical) | McNemar test: bar graph | McNemar test: bar graph |
Dependent variable (Y) | Independent variable (X) | Statistical method | Formula | Result |
---|---|---|---|---|
Continuous variable (e.g., operation time) | Continuous or categorical variables | Linear regression | Beta (SE) | |
Categorical variable (e.g., complication or not) | Continuous or categorical variables | Logistic regression | OR (95% CI) | |
Categorical + continuous variable (e.g., death or survival; time to death) | Continuous or categorical variables | Cox regression | HR (95% CI) |
The chi-square test, Fisher test, and McNemar test can be applied regardless of whether the data are parametric or nonparametric.
SE, standard error; OR, odds ratio; CI, confidence interval; HR, hazard ratio.