Assignment

Poster sessions are often a good place for authors of smaller or pilot studies, and students who are just learning research, to present findings as part of a conference.

Miller (2007), suggests when presenting posters, using charts is the preferred way to convey numeric patterns, quickly revealing the relative sizes of groups, comparative levels of some outcome, or directions of trends. The article goes on to suggest the importance of explaining both the direction and magnitude of the association when describing patterns or numeric contrasts. I found the examples useful.

Poor: "Number of enrolled children in the family is correlated with disenrollment."

Comment: Neither the direction nor the size of the association is apparent.

Better: "Families with only one child enrolled in the program were about 1.4 times as likely as larger families to disenroll."

Comment: This version explains the association between number of children and disenrollment without requiring viewers to exponentiate the log-hazard in their heads to assess the size and direction of that association. It also explicitly identifies the group against which one-child families are compared in the model. Poster presentations should focus on getting the message across, using handouts to explain statistical approaches, and details of the data is beneficial for the audience when using poster presentations.

Reference:

Miller, J. E. (2007). Preparing and Presenting Effective Research Posters. Health Services Research, 42(1 Pt 1), 311-328.