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The P value is a pillar of statistics [1]. It appears in the majority of research papers, and
both researchers and journal editors feel
comfortable with it. Yet at the same time,
there are many who argue that it is misunderstood and improperly used [1, 2]. With
the rise of evidence-based practice, [3] clinicians need to be able to use published reports to guide their practice, understanding
and interpreting P values is therefore important.
To illustrate the use of the P value the
data in Table 1 will be used. This fictitious
data set shows the results of a standard care
and a treatment group. The treatment group
has undergone a new therapy for low back
pain, and the visual analog scale (VAS) pain
scores are reported. From the table it can be
seen that in the standard care group VAS
score changed by 0.1 (0.3) and by 2.4 (0.5) in
the treatment group.
Extensive use of the P value was first began in the 1920s when Fisher proposed the
Significance test [4]. The significance test
used the P value as an index to measure the
strength of evidence against the null hypothesis [5, 6]. For the data in Table 1, the
null hypothesis would be There will be no
difference between the standard care and
treatment groups, post intervention. This
null hypothesis can be tested using an independent t-test of the change scores. This
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1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
Mean
SD
Pre
4
4
5
3
6
4
2
3
6
2
3.9
1.4
Standard care
Post
4
4
5
3
5
4
2
3
6
2
3.8
1.3
Change
0
0
0
0
1
0
0
0
0
0
0.1
0.3
Pre
4
6
5
3
6
4
3
3
4
3
4.1
1.2
Treatment
Post
1
3
3
1
3
2
1
1
1
1
1.7
0.9
Change
3
3
2
2
3
2
2
2
3
2
2.4
0.5
TABLE 1 Visual analogue scale pain scores for standard care and treatment groups, pre and post.
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