I am studying two groups of patients group A that did not need surgery, and Group B that required surgery. the outcome variable is a classification which has four ordinal classes (One through Four with worsening outcomes as grades increase).
Which statistical test will fit the bill the most?
For your study comparing two groups of patients (Group A: no surgery and Group B: required surgery) with an ordinal outcome that has four classes (from best to worst outcomes), the "Mann-Whitney U Test" is the most suitable statistical test. This test works well when the outcome variable is ordinal and the groups being compared are independent. It doesn’t require the data to follow a normal distribution and is used to check whether one group tends to have better or worse outcomes than the other.
If you want to include additional factors or explore how group membership influences the outcome while controlling for other variables, you could use Ordinal Logistic Regression. However, for a straightforward comparison between the two groups, the Mann-Whitney U Test is the best choice.
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