[Planning for Prosthodontic Clinical Researches--Predictor and Outcome Variables and Statistical Analysis.]

Abstract

The choice of statistic methods and interpretation of these results are annoying issues to accomplish clinical epidemiologic researches. Especially beginners who have less experience in conducting clinical studies would often feel difficulty due to the mental hurdle of these statistical procedures. However, the major principles of clinical epidemiological research were setting of hypothesis and study design, thus predictor variables, outcome variables and related statistical methods would be automatically determined after decision of these steps. In this article, the essential knowledge to start clinical study such as various type of variables, selection of statistical procedures was reviewed following the previous review article that mainly focused on study designs.