IIntroduction:

The principles and methodologies of evidence-based medicine constitute an important field of attention, by means of which all the available information is incorporated in a reflexive manner, in order to provide the patient with the best options for health problems. The population. Knowing the type of evidence and the statistical analyzes used improve the clinician's abilities to make any decision. The objective of this study was to identify the research designs and statistical tests used in dentistry journals indexed in the SciELO network between 2000 and 2016.

Material and method:

A cross-sectional descriptive bibliometric study was carried out. The search included all the dental journals indexed in the SciELO database (Scientific Electronic Library Online), between 2000 and 2016, with availability in Spanish. We excluded journals that did not present online information available, without access or that were eliminated from the database. The search was made from the SciELO web portal (http://www.scielo.org/php/index.php), in order to obtain access to the entire network, through the section “magazine collections”, where the access links for each country were found.

Results:

634 articles were analyzed from the first semester of 2000 to the second semester of 2016. The study designs most used were the cross section study(244)and thein vitro study (107). Of the parametric statistical tests ANOVA (121)and t-test for independent samples(96) were the most frequently used and non-parametric tests, it was Pearson's Chi Square(113)and U-Mann Whitney(70).

Discussion:

The differences observed between the different study designs remains similar to what had been previously reported, with the cross-sectional design being the most used. Understanding and interpreting the statistical methods will allow to identify relevant and applicable results for clinical decision making.

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