MET workshops
Statistics for editors and translators
Most quantitative research today involves statistical analyses, and while researchers may be adept with statistical calculations they often lack skills in writing up statistical results. Editors and translators who understand fundamental statistical concepts, terminology and procedures can help their clients present research correctly, both linguistically and scientifically. This workshop covers a series of topics that language professionals should be familiar with when working on text with statistical data. The acquired knowledge will enable them to help researchers present their work in grammatically and statistically correct sentences.
Facilitator: Valerie Matarese
Purpose: The workshop teaches basic statistical concepts and shows how to use this knowledge when working with sentences that report statistical results.
Description: We begin with an overview of data characteristics and basic terminology. Then we discuss descriptive statistics, used to summarize raw data in reportable values (e.g. mean, median, standard deviation), and learn when each type of value is appropriate. Next, we explore how researchers use inferential statistics to make inferences about natural phenomena from experimental data: how confidence intervals are used to estimate the value of a variable in a population, and how statistical hypothesis tests assess a possible association between two variables or a difference in one variable between groups. We also look at recent criticisms of P values as measures of statistical significance. Finally, we combine our accrued knowledge of the above to learn how statistical results are presented at the sentence level in research articles, depending on the discipline. The workshop consists of alternating short lectures and practice exercises. The exercises are done individually and discussed immediately in the group.
Participant profile: Editors and translators who work on research articles written in English that report the results of statistical analyses. Language professionals working with government statistical reports or similar texts may also find the workshop useful.
Outcome: During the workshop, participants will learn about
- types of data (discrete, continuous, ordinal, nominal and dichotomous)
- statistical definitions of a sample and a population
- characteristics of a data distribution (modality and normality versus skewness)
- main types of descriptive statistics (e.g. mean, median and range)
- use and interpretation of confidence intervals
- use of statistical hypothesis tests and interpretation of the resulting P values
- criticism of P values and calls to abandon statistical significance
- proper presentation of statistical results: sentence structure, order of concepts, punctuation and spacing
- common errors in statistical reporting, and when to correct or to query
Preparation: Before the workshop, participants will receive a PDF booklet that covers most of the content and is intended to be used for note-taking during the session and as a reference afterward. The booklet also contains the exercises to be done in the workshop.
Optional reading before and after the workshop
Dahlin JL, Sittampalam GS, Coussens NP, et al. Basic guidelines for reporting non-clinical data. In: Markossian S, et al., eds. The Assay Guidance Manual. Bethesda: National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, 2019.
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK550206/
Lang T, Altman D. Statistical analyses and methods in the published literature: The SAMPL guidelines. Medical Writing, 2016;25:31-36.
Available from the journal website.
Lang TA, Secic M. How to Report Statistics in Medicine. Annotated Guidelines for Authors, Editors and Reviewers, 2nd ed. Philadelphia: American College of Physicians, 2006.
A classic book on reporting statistics, written by a medical editor.
Wasserman RL, Lazar NA. The ASA’s statement on p-values: context, process, and purpose (editorial). The American Statistician 2016;70(2):129-133. Includes the “ASA statement on statistical significance and p-values”.
DOI: 10.1080/00031305.2016.1154108
Wasserman RL, Schirm AL, Lazar NA. Moving to a world beyond “p<0.05” (editorial). The American Statistician 2019;73(S1):1-19.
DOI: 10.1080/00031305.2019.1583913
About the facilitator: Valerie Matarese is an authors’ editor and trainer in scientific writing with ~25 years’ experience supporting biomedical researchers mostly in Italy. She offers an intensive, 35-hour course on research article writing for early career researchers, for which she self-published a 200-page course manual. The PDF booklet for this workshop is an extract from the manual. Valerie holds BS and PhD degrees in biochemistry–molecular biology.
