Abstract:
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Faculty in the health sciences are responsible for educating future healthcare professionals to read and understand the health literature. To do so requires statistical literacy and reasoning, critical thinking, and knowledge of statistical methods. We used probability sampling to randomly select schools of dentistry, medicine, nursing, pharmacy, and public health. All faculty in each selected school received an invitation to participate in an online Qualtrics survey, which consisted of a demographic questionnaire and statistical knowledge assessment tool. A total of 708 (6.5%) faculty responded, of which 129 (18.2%) reported having taught statistics or biostatistics. This paper focuses on the statistics educators subsample from our study. We will summarize overall and individual item performance on questions about fundamental statistical methods and concepts, including randomization, observational studies, statistical power, confidence intervals, multiple comparisons, standard error, regression response variables, and odds ratios. We will discuss these findings in relation to the presented arguments for adding graphical and statistical literacy elements to the curriculum.
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