ArticleMedical education online2014
Assessment of cognitive biases and biostatistics knowledge of medical residents: a multicenter, cross-sectional questionnaire study.
Article in Medical education online, 2014. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 9 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
9 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Cognitive biases associated with medical decisions: a systematic review.BMC medical informatics and decision making · 2016Pooled it
- The role of collaboration and mentorship in the publication of surgical resident research.Canadian medical education journal · 2023Article
- Statistical literacy and scientific reasoning & argumentation in physicians.GMS journal for medical education · 2021Article
- A Guide to Basic Statistics for Educational Research.MedEdPORTAL : the journal of teaching and learning resources · 2021Article
- Knowledge and confidence level of Canadian urology residents toward biostatistics: A national survey.Canadian Urological Association journal = Journal de l'Association des urologues du Canada · 2020Article
- Clinicians' Perceived Understanding of Biostatistical Results in the Medical Literature: A Cross-Sectional Study.Medicina (Kaunas, Lithuania) · 2019Article
- The development of scientific reasoning in medical education: a psychological perspective.Clujul medical (1957) · 2016Review
- Is the p-value properly interpreted by critical care professionals? Online survey.Revista Brasileira de terapia intensivaArticle
- Knowledge and Use of Biostatistics among Resident and Junior Doctors at the University of Port Harcourt Teaching Hospital, Port Harcourt.Nigerian journal of surgery : official publication of the Nigerian Surgical Research SocietyArticle
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Authors and funding
7 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
purposeThe aim of this study is to determine the perceived familiarity of medical residents with statistical concepts, assess their ability to integrate these concepts in clinical scenarios, and investigate their susceptibility to the gambler's fallacy and the conjunction fallacy.
methodsA multi-institutional, cross-sectional survey of Greek medical residents was performed. Participants were asked to indicate their familiarity with basic statistical concepts and answer clinically oriented questions designed to assess their biostatistics knowledge and cognitive biases. Univariate, bivariate, and multivariate statistical models were used for the evaluation of data.
resultsOut of 153 respondents (76.5% response rate), only two participants (1.3%) were able to answer all seven biostatistics knowledge questions correctly while 29 residents (19%) gave incorrect answers to all questions. The proportion of correct answers to each biostatistics knowledge question ranged from 15 to 51.6%. Residents with greater self-reported familiarity were more likely to perform better on the respective knowledge question (all p<0.01). Multivariate analysis of the effect of individual resident characteristics on questionnaire performance showed that previous education outside Greece, primarily during medical school, was associated with lower biostatistics knowledge scores (p<0.001). A little more than half of the respondents (54.2%) answered the gambler's fallacy quiz correctly. Residents with higher performance on the biostatistics knowledge questions were less prone to the gambler's fallacy (odds ratio 1.38, 95% confidence intervals 1.12-1.70, p=0.003). Only 48 residents (31.4%) did not violate the conjunction rule.
conclusionsA large number of medical residents are unable to correctly interpret crucial statistical concepts that are commonly found in the medical literature. They are also especially prone to the gambler's fallacy bias, which may undermine clinical judgment and medical decision making. Formalized systematic teaching of biostatistics during residency will be required to de-bias residents and ensure that they are proficient in understanding and communicating statistical information.
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