To assess the ophthalmologists’ knowledge of statistical concepts in Iran and to identify the related factors.

In this cross sectional study, 322 registered ophthalmologists at the 25th Annual Congress of the Iranian Society of Ophthalmology in December 2015 were randomly selected to interview and complete the statistical knowledge questionnaire. The questionnaire consisted of 18 most common statistical terms and methods which used in the majority of the studies. The level of knowledge was scaled by 4-point-Likert scale from never heard to completely know. We consider never heard and do not know as zero and the other as one score for each item. The associations were assessed using a backward general linear regression model.

A total of 322 ophthalmologists with the mean age of 41.6±12.9 years (26.1% female and 73.9% male) were participated in the study. The participants comprised general ophthalmologists (68.0%) and subspecialists in ophthalmology (32.0%). Twelve point nine percent of them were the faculty members. Most of the participants were completely know the concept of sensitivity and specificity (65.2%), mean, median and standard deviation (56.8%) and P-value (55.3%). While 56.4% and 48.8% of ophthalmologists were never heard about the linear mixed model and generalized estimating equations, respectively. The level of knowledge of statistic was associated with lower age (<0.001), being the faculty member (<0.001), knowledge of the English language (0.001) and the number of published articles in past three years in the international journals (0.047).

Statistical analyses are an essential part of the ophthalmology and vision science research. The current study showed that the majority of the Iranian ophthalmologists were familiar with the simple statistical terms and methods. However, it is recommended that the continuing medical education programs focusing on the more complex statistical methods be held for the ophthalmologists who are involved in the training and designing the new research.