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Before we begin, my knowledge around anything "statistics" related is minimal so any help is appreciated.

I am studying whether performing a surgery at night is safe vs during the day.

I would like to first check whether comparing continuous data (presented as medians) between two groups should be compared with Mann-Whitney U test, and whether categorical data (presented as count or percentage) should be compared with chi-square.

Next, I want to use separate regression analyses to identify independent predictors of an outcome (e.g. surgical complication, length of hospital stay etc). Which regressions do I run for the following:

1 My dependent variable (or outcome) is categorical (yes/no), and my independent variables are categorical or continuous.

2 My dependent variable is continuous, and my independent variables are categorical or continuous.

I also want to report the Odds ratio (and 95% CI) of each predictor on the chosen outcome, to highlight which are most likely to increase/decrease/or have no effect on the outcome.

P.S. I am using SPSS

Thankyou in advance for your help!!!

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  • $\begingroup$ Please indicate if this is homework or self-assigned work. $\endgroup$
    – cherub
    May 4, 2018 at 13:31
  • $\begingroup$ This is self-assigned unfunded research. $\endgroup$
    – T. Hall
    May 5, 2018 at 2:19

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First, I am guessing from your question that you are a surgeon or other doctor doing some research. How would you respond to someone asking something like "My knowledge of surgery is minimal, so any help would be appreciated. How do I operate on the heart?"

So, my first suggestion to you is to hire a statistician/data analyst.

Now, if you ignore that advice, either because of cost or some other reason, I'll say this: You have asked about surgical complications and length of hospital stay. Then you asked about categorical dependent variables (yes/no) and continuous dependent variables. Unfortunately, the first two don't fit well into the latter two: For surgical complication you probably want (at least to start) a multinomial logistic regression. For the second, you probably want some kind of survival analysis (although this will depend on other characteristics of your study). For yes/no DVs you usually want logistic regression. For continuous DVs the usual start is linear regression.

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  • $\begingroup$ Hi Peter, thanks for your help. Perhaps I should try and clarify things a bit better... $\endgroup$
    – T. Hall
    May 4, 2018 at 12:04
  • $\begingroup$ For surgical complications I have reported this as either yes (there was a complication) or no. I then want to identify what other variables that I have collected are associated with this outcome (a surgical complication). These variables include time of surgery (night vs day), age in years etc. So the outcome of interest is yes/no, but the variables may be yes/no (categorical?) or age (continuous?). Would logistic regression be the way to go here? Also, is it possible to calculate odds ratios using logistic regression? Many thanks! $\endgroup$
    – T. Hall
    May 4, 2018 at 12:11
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    $\begingroup$ Yes, you can have both categorical and continuous predictors in logistic regression. $\endgroup$
    – dankernler
    May 4, 2018 at 13:11
  • $\begingroup$ Yes, you can do that with logistic regression, but making all surgical complications the same ("yes") is probably not ideal. $\endgroup$
    – Peter Flom
    May 4, 2018 at 20:13

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