Medication efficacy is defined as the ability of a particular drug to produce the anticipated positive effect (Farinde, 2018). It is important to notice that drug efficacy is a variable different from drug effectiveness. Practically, efficacy is determined in clinical trials where medications are tested on subjects, and their effects are compared to one another. At the same time, drug effectiveness is associated with real-world use (Farinde, 2018). In that way, assessing the efficacy of a particular, drug, it could be appropriate to apply descriptive statistics.
There are two main types of statistics that are commonly used in research. The selection of each type depends on the nature and purpose of each particular research project. The major purpose of descriptive statistics is to collect and process data for further presentation (Kalla, 2011). In that way, when it comes to the assessment of medication efficacy, this procedure is carried out in a clinical environment that is quite limited. The range of variables measured is narrow and is focused on the degree of an effect produced by the tested drug. Differently put, the purpose of efficacy assessment goes down to the collection and presentation of data about the performance of a chosen drug during the trial. Further, since efficacy and effectiveness of any given medication are correlated and form a continuous bond, inferential statistics should be applied to assess the effectiveness of medication (Gartlehner, Hansen, Nissman, Lohr, & Carey, 2006). The latter type of statistics is focused on making the appropriate conclusion from the statistical data analysis (Kalla, 2011). As a result, it would use the descriptive data about the efficacy of the drug in question and apply it to the effectiveness criteria.
References
Farinde, A. (2018).Drug action. Web.
Gartlehner, G., Hansen, R., Nissman, D., Lohr, K., & Carey, T. (2006). Criteria for distinguishing effectiveness from efficacy trials in systematic reviews. Rockville, MD: Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (US).
Kalla, S. (2011). Branches of statistics. Web.