There is life beyond the statistical significance.

Publisher: BioMed Central Country of Publication: England NLM ID: 101224380 Publication Model: Electronic Cited Medium: Internet ISSN: 1742-4755 (Electronic) Linking ISSN: 17424755 NLM ISO Abbreviation: Reprod Health Subsets: MEDLINE

Original Publication: [London] : BioMed Central, 2004-

Data Interpretation, Statistical* ; Statistics as Topic*; Decision Making ; Humans ; Jurisprudence

This article challenges the "tyranny of P-value" and promote more valuable and applicable interpretations of the results of research on health care delivery. We provide here solid arguments to retire statistical significance as the unique way to interpret results, after presenting the current state of the debate inside the scientific community. Instead, we promote reporting the much more informative confidence intervals and eventually adding exact P-values. We also provide some clues to integrate statistical and clinical significance by referring to minimal important differences and integrating the effect size of an intervention and the certainty of evidence ideally using the GRADE approach. We have argued against interpreting or reporting results as statistically significant or statistically non-significant. We recommend showing important clinical benefits with their confidence intervals in cases of point estimates compatible with results benefits and even important harms. It seems fair to report the point estimate and the more likely values along with a very clear statement of the implications of extremes of the intervals. We recommend drawing conclusions, considering the multiple factors besides P-values such as certainty of the evidence for each outcome, net benefit, economic considerations and values and preferences. We use several examples and figures to illustrate different scenarios and further suggest a wording to standardize the reporting. Several statistical measures have a role in the scientific communication of studies, but it is time to understand that there is life beyond the statistical significance. There is a great opportunity for improvement towards a more complete interpretation and to a more standardized reporting.

BMJ. 1995 Aug 19;311(7003):485. (PMID: 7647644)
Health Serv Res. 2005 Apr;40(2):593-7. (PMID: 15762909)
Stat Med. 2006 Jan 15;25(1):127-41. (PMID: 16217841)
J Man Manip Ther. 2012 Aug;20(3):160-6. (PMID: 23904756)
J Clin Epidemiol. 2011 Apr;64(4):383-94. (PMID: 21195583)
J Clin Epidemiol. 2008 Feb;61(2):102-9. (PMID: 18177782)
Nature. 2019 Mar;567(7748):305-307. (PMID: 30894741)
BMC Med Res Methodol. 2014 Mar 04;14:34. (PMID: 24588900)
BMJ. 2010 Mar 23;340:c869. (PMID: 20332511)
BMC Med Res Methodol. 2014 Nov 21;14:120. (PMID: 25416419)
J Clin Epidemiol. 2011 Dec;64(12):1283-93. (PMID: 21839614)

Date Created: 20210418 Date Completed: 20210621 Latest Revision: 20240809

20240809

PMC8052638

10.1186/s12978-021-01131-w

33865412