Issue link: https://www.massageandbodyworkdigital.com/i/68005
READING CHARTS AND GRAPHS There is a section of many research articles where a real effort is made to present information in a concise way that makes it easy to visualize. Research articles, by nature of their traditional format, are not particularly friendly to visual learners. However, charts, graphs, tables, and other non-expository methods of presenting information are a compact way of communicating a great deal of information. They provide a high-level overview and show trends or patterns, usually among a group of participants, rather than focusing on results for any particular individual. In this column, we'll examine some representative examples in detail. The results in this article are from a hypothetical study on massage for back pain in manual laborers, which we'll refer to as Huffman 2007. In this fictional study, the research team makes use of several charts to indicate the results, or outcomes of their study, in addition to the narrative description in the text. In general, good charts should be straightforward, and—even without a great deal of statistical background on the part of the reader—easy to understand at a very general level. You should be able to see whether a trend is increasing, decreasing, or staying the same, and if some values are very different from other values. REPRESENTING TEXT In this first example, notice how the researchers tie their text description to the information shown in their charts. Image 1 represents the mean (average) number of backaches experienced over the period before and during the study. Analysis of the data indicated a reliable change over time for number of backaches per week and confirmed that the frequency of backaches experienced was significantly lower during the four months of the treatment period than it was during the four months of the pretreatment period (p < 0.001). All of the study participants reported a reduction in the number of backaches per month in the first month of the massage treatment period. As well, the mean number of backaches per month decreased from 6.5 before treatment to 1.56 during the treatment period. visit massageandbodywork.com to access your digital magazine 127