A Guide to Selecting the Appropriate Statistical Tests for Proposals and Articles in Medical Sciences

Background & Objective: The main purpose of medical researches is to answer a research question or to solve a problem to promote the health of a society. The first objective is to answer the research question correctly with minimal errors. The second objective is the publication of the results in order to generalize them to a population and use in a wider dimension. To achieve these objectives, using biostatistics is necessary. Despite the importance of biostatistics in medical research, researchers have limited understanding of it or due to its complications they refrain from its use. Statistics help the researcher in different levels of research including writing a proposal and interpretation of other papers. Moreover, biostatisticians and epidemiologists also play a very important role in the preparation of manuscripts for publication. The present article has eloquently described the most important statistical tests in medical research with applied examples. Keywords Selecting statistical tests Parametric tests Non-parametric test