This week's featured tip from SAS Press author Jack Shostak should spark the interest of those of you working in the pharmaceutical or clinical trials industries. While I'm not a programmer, myself, Jack's book has been consistently described as being accessible, practical, and helpful for both beginners and advanced SAS programmers. You may want to read some of these reviews for SAS Programming in the Pharmaceutical Industry.

Now, on to this week's featured tip!

The following excerpt is from SAS Press author Jack Shostak's book SAS Programming in the Pharmaceutical Industry. Copyright © 2005, SAS Institute Inc., Cary, North Carolina, USA. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. (please note that results may vary depending on your version of SAS software)

A Typical Clinical Trial Table

Clinical trial tables have certain common features. A sample annotated demographics table follows, with annotated descriptions of the key features.

Notes for the table:
1. This is not a simple page counter. It also includes the total number of pages for the given piece of output.
2. In the column heading you see “N=,” which represents the number of subjects in the given column population.
3. Here you have the p-values from inferential statistical comparisons.
4. Note that the continuous statistics are presented with a row-based orientation.
5. Categorical frequency counts are presented in a single item as “count (percentage).” These percentages can be calculated and formatted in many different ways, but they are always clustered together as a single column item.
6. The footnote contains the name of the program that created the output as well as the date it was created.

To learn more about Jack Shostak and his work-- and to read a free chapter from SAS Programming in the Pharmaceutical Industry, visit his author's page.