[R] Comparison of demographics between 2 study samples
Jim Lemon
jim at bitwrit.com.au
Thu Aug 14 11:46:41 CEST 2008
On Wed, 2008-08-13 at 19:14 -0700, Mark Home wrote:
> Dear All:
>
> I have a clinical study where I would like to compare the demographic information for 2 samples in a study. The demographics include both categorical and continuous variables. I would like to be able to say whether the demographics are significantly different or not.
>
> The majority of papers that I have read use multiple techniques to achieve this (e.g., t-test for the continuous variables and either Fischer exact or Chi-square for categorical). I wonder whether this might lead to spurious differences due to multiple significance tests. Is there a better way to do this?
>
Hi Mark,
Most of these comparisons are uncorrected, as the aim is to demonstrate
that the samples come from the same population. Therefore, you aren't
worried about making a Type I error, but ignoring a sampling difference
that might bias your results.
Jim
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