Healthy Skepticism Library item: 19040

Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.

Publication type: Journal Article

Woloshin S, Schwartz LM, Welch HG
Patients and medical statistics. Interest, confidence, and ability.
J Gen Intern Med 2005; 20:(11):996-1000
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1490265/?tool=pubmed

Abstract:

BACKGROUND: People are increasingly presented with medical statistics. There are no existing measures to assess their level of interest or confidence in using medical statistics.

OBJECTIVE: To develop 2 new measures, the STAT-interest and STAT-confidence scales, and assess their reliability and validity.

DESIGN: Survey with retest after approximately 2 weeks.

SUBJECTS: Two hundred and twenty-four people were recruited from advertisements in local newspapers, an outpatient clinic waiting area, and a hospital open house.

MEASURES: We developed and revised 5 items on interest in medical statistics and 3 on confidence understanding statistics.

RESULTS: Study participants were mostly college graduates (52%); 25% had a high school education or less. The mean age was 53 (range 20 to 84) years. Most paid attention to medical statistics (6% paid no attention). The mean (SD) STAT-interest score was 68 (17) and ranged from 15 to 100. Confidence in using statistics was also high: the mean (SD) STAT-confidence score was 65 (19) and ranged from 11 to 100. STAT-interest and STAT-confidence scores were moderately correlated (r=.36, P<.001). Both scales demonstrated good test-retest repeatability (r=.60, .62, respectively), internal consistency reliability (Cronbach’s alpha=0.70 and 0.78), and usability (individual item nonresponse ranged from 0% to 1.3%). Scale scores correlated only weakly with scores on a medical data interpretation test (r=.15 and .26, respectively).

CONCLUSION: The STAT-interest and STAT-confidence scales are usable and reliable. Interest and confidence were only weakly related to the ability to actually use data.

Keywords:
Adult Aged Aged, 80 and over Attitude to Health* Decision Making* Female Humans Male Middle Aged Reproducibility of Results Risk Assessment/statistics & numerical data Statistics as Topic*

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Far too large a section of the treatment of disease is to-day controlled by the big manufacturing pharmacists, who have enslaved us in a plausible pseudo-science...
The blind faith which some men have in medicines illustrates too often the greatest of all human capacities - the capacity for self deception...
Some one will say, Is this all your science has to tell us? Is this the outcome of decades of good clinical work, of patient study of the disease, of anxious trial in such good faith of so many drugs? Give us back the childlike trust of the fathers in antimony and in the lancet rather than this cold nihilism. Not at all! Let us accept the truth, however unpleasant it may be, and with the death rate staring us in the face, let us not be deceived with vain fancies...
we need a stern, iconoclastic spirit which leads, not to nihilism, but to an active skepticism - not the passive skepticism, born of despair, but the active skepticism born of a knowledge that recognizes its limitations and knows full well that only in this attitude of mind can true progress be made.
- William Osler 1909