Principles of Data Analysis and Interpretation under Clinical Studies: Prompting Points

Abstract

Once accurate data collection is completed under a clinical study, to generate quality evidence regarding informed decisions for clinical/ public health practice, two important questions arise: how to analyse data appropriately?; and how to interpret the analytical results accurately? For this, one has to follow certain basic principles of data analysis and interpretation. Further, sometimes even analytical methods may be same regardless of involved research questions, hypotheses and objectives of the study, but interpretation is mainly guided by study design. The present write-up has briefly described these principles and their related aspects to make the readers aware about them while dealing with data analysis and interpretation under any clinical study.