Abstract
BackgroundTables are often overlooked by many readers of papers who tend to focus on the text. Good tables tell much of the story of a paper and give a richer insight into the details of the study participants and the main research findings. Being confident in reading tables and constructing clear tables are important skills for researchers to master.MethodCommon forms of tables were considered, along with the standard statistics used in them. Papers in the Archives of Public Health published during 2015 and 2016 were hand-searched for examples to illustrate the points being made. Presentation of graphs and figures were not considered as they are outside the scope of the paper.ResultsBasic statistical concepts are outlined to aid understanding of each of the tables presented. The first table in many papers gives an overview of the study population and its characteristics, usually giving numbers and percentages of the study population in different categories (e.g. by sex, educational attainment, smoking status) and summaries of measured characteristics (continuous variables) of the participants (e.g. age, height, body mass index). Tables giving the results of the analyses follow; these often include summaries of characteristics in different groups of participants, as well as relationships between the outcome under study and the exposure of interest. For continuous outcome data, results are often expressed as differences between means, or regression or correlation coefficients. Ratio/relative measures (e.g. relative risks, odds ratios) are usually used for binary outcome measures that take one of two values for each study participants (e.g. dead versus alive, obese versus non-obese). Tables come in many forms, but various standard types are described here.ConclusionClear tables provide much of the important detail in a paper and researchers are encouraged to read and construct them with care.
Highlights
IntroductionGood tables tell much of the story of a paper and give a richer insight into the details of the study participants and the main research findings
Tables are often overlooked by many readers of papers who tend to focus on the text
The first table in many papers gives an overview of the study population and its characteristics, usually giving numbers and percentages of the study population in different categories and summaries of measured characteristics of the participants
Summary
Good tables tell much of the story of a paper and give a richer insight into the details of the study participants and the main research findings. Being confident in reading tables and constructing clear tables are important skills for researchers to master. Many people say that they find tables difficult to understand so focus only on the text when reading a paper. Tables provide a much richer sense of a study population and the results than can be described in the text. Good graphs and figures can often provide a more accessible presentation of study findings than tables. They can add to the understanding of the findings considerably, but they can rarely contain as much detail as a table. Choosing when to present a graph or figure and when to present a table needs careful consideration but this article focuses only on the presentation of tables
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