INTRODUCTION TO
STATISTICS
Mr. M. Sekar
Statistician
Department of community medicine
Slims
CONTENTS
• INTRODUCTION TO STATISTICS
• DEFINITION OF STATISTICS
• INTRODUCTION & DEFINITION OF BIOSTATISTICS
• APPLICATION & USES OF STATISTICS
• APPLICATION & USES OF BIOSTATISTICS IN MEDIACL & NURSING FIELD
• SELECTED DEFINITIONS OF TERMS USED IN STATISTICS.
INTRODUCTION TO STATISTICS IN
NURSING RESEARCH
Statistics means “ science of figures”.
The word statistics comes from the Italian word statista- statement.
German word Statistik –political state.
Statistics is the science and art of dealing with facts and figures.
Definition of statistics
Statistics the science of collecting, organizing, presenting, analyzing and
interpreting data to help in making more effective decisions.
Statistical analysis is implemented to manipulate, summarize and investigate
data.
STATISTICS- is a field of study concerned with techniques or methods of
collection, classification, summarizing, interpretation
of data & drawing inferences, testing of hypothesis and
Making references
Definition of Biostatistics
Biostatistics is the branch of statistics applied to biological or medical
sciences.
Biostatistics is the term used when the tools of statistics are applied to the
data that is derived from biological & health sciences such as medicine,
biology, nursing, public health, etc…
Types of statistics
Descriptive statistics
descriptive statistics are brief information that summarize given data
set, which can be either a representation of the entire population or a sample of
the population.
descriptive statistics are broken down into measures of central tendency
and measures of dispersion (variability).
Measures of Measures of
Central tendency Variability
Mean Standard Deviation
Median Range
Mode Variance
Inferential statistics
inferential statistics is concerned with populations and uses sample data
to make an inference about the population or to test the hypothesis considered
at the beginning of the research study.
Application & uses of statistics
It facilitates comparison
It simplifies the masses of figures.
It helps in formulating and testing of hypothesis.
It helps in prediction.
It present the fact in a definite form.
It is the science of summarizing, collecting, presenting and interpreting data
in medical practice and using them to estimate the magnitude of associations
and test of hypothesis.
Application of uses of biostatistics in
medical & nursing field
• To define what is normal or healthy & what is abnormal
• To identify signs and symptoms of a disease
• To establish the accuracy of diagnostic procedure
• To access the efficacy of a new drug
• To compare the efficacy of particular drug
• To find an association between two attributes such as cancer & smoking ,
filariasis & social class.
• Planning of experiments & analysis of results in health field
• To assess the treatment protocol
• Collection, analysis & dissemination of various population health statistics
Selected definitions or terms used in
statistics
• Data – A set of value recorded on one or more observation unit & the factual
information collected during research studies.
• Constant – quantities that do not vary
• Variable – a characteristic that takes different values in different or thing. An
attribute that varies, that is taken on different values ( eg. Body
temperature, body weight )
Continuation….
• Observation – an event and its measurement such as BP (event ) & 120/80 mm
Hg (measurement)
• Population – the entire set of individual or objects having some common
characteristics (eg. All registered nurses in india )
• Sample- A subset of population selected to participate in study that
represents the entire population.
Thank you
Scales of measurements
There are four level of measurements
1. Nominal measurements
2. Ordinal measurements
3. Interval measurements
4. Ratio measurements
Psychologist Stanley smith Stevens created these 4 levels of measurements in
1946.
Nominal measurements
It involves the assignments of numbers to represent categories or classes of things.
This measurements normally deals with only with non-numeric variables or where numbers have
no value.
For ex.
Sex
Marital status
College courses
Blood type …..
Ordinal measurements
It ranks objects based on their relative standing on a specific attribute.
The order of ranking is imposed on categories.
The numbers must preserve some level of order buy do not need to be precise
Health status Income status
Poor Low income
Fair Middle income
Good Upper income
Excellent
Interval measurements
In this level, there is specification of ranking of objects on an attribute of the
distance between those objects.
There is, more or less, equal numerical distance intervals.
There is no absolute zero because there is no zero point or absence of
concept.
Temperature
Ratio level measurements
It is the highest level of measurements
It has all the three attributes: magnitude, equal interval and absolute zero
point.
It represents continuous values.
Biophysical parameters
Weight of children vs adults
Height of children vs adults
Blood pressure (120/80 )
