Statistical analysis

The tabulated data underwent descriptive analysis and the associations, when appropriate, were analyzed by means of the χ² test or Fisher exact test. Nonparametric variables were studied using the Mann-Whitney test. The significance level adopted was 5%. A complementary analysis was performed because of the variety of quantitative data. The authors applied a correspondence analysis, which is a graphic representation of variable of a contingency table, verifying the degree of interaction between them. The correspondence analysis is mainly applied in contingency tables with a large number of categories to allow a visualization of “attraction” or “repulsion” between categories of variables.