Resource of the Week #101: A Set of Guidelines for Reporting Statistics

Hello again. Last week a new set of guidelines for reporting statistics became openly available. I’m pleased to feature these guidelines as our Resource of the Week.

These guidelines are by communication expert Tom Lang and statistician Douglas G. Altman. Perhaps you know Tom Lang through work he did for AuthorAID.  Or perhaps you’ve seen items by him in the AuthorAID Resource Library.

The guidelines are called the SAMPL Guidelines. SAMPL stands for Statistical Analyses and Methods in the Published Literature.

Although the guidelines are primarily for biomedical papers, most of the content also applies to reporting statistics in other fields. Thus, for example, I’ll show the guidelines in my course on communication research methods.

Within the guidelines, sections that might be of especially wide interest include

• “Guiding Principles for Reporting Statistical Methods and Results”
• “General Principles for Reporting Statistical Methods”
• “Reporting Numbers and Descriptive Statistics”
• “Reporting Hypothesis Tests”
• “Reporting Association Analyses”

The guidelines can help authors, editors, and peer reviewers. The authors state that the guidelines are “suitable for medical journals to include in their Instructions for Authors”. The guidelines “may be reprinted without charge but must include the original citation”.

Until the next post—

Barbara