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Improving the interpretation of quality of life evidence in meta-analyses: the application of minimal important difference units
Systematic reviews of randomized trials that include measurements of health-related quality of life potentially provide critical information for patient and clinicians facing challenging health care decisions. When, as is most often the case, individual randomized trials use different measurement in...
Autores principales: | , , , , , , |
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Formato: | Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
BioMed Central
2010
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2959099/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20937092 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1477-7525-8-116 |
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author | Johnston, Bradley C Thorlund, Kristian Schünemann, Holger J Xie, Feng Murad, Mohammad Hassan Montori, Victor M Guyatt, Gordon H |
author_facet | Johnston, Bradley C Thorlund, Kristian Schünemann, Holger J Xie, Feng Murad, Mohammad Hassan Montori, Victor M Guyatt, Gordon H |
author_sort | Johnston, Bradley C |
collection | PubMed |
description | Systematic reviews of randomized trials that include measurements of health-related quality of life potentially provide critical information for patient and clinicians facing challenging health care decisions. When, as is most often the case, individual randomized trials use different measurement instruments for the same construct (such as physical or emotional function), authors typically report differences between intervention and control in standard deviation units (so-called "standardized mean difference" or "effect size"). This approach has statistical limitations (it is influenced by the heterogeneity of the population) and is non-intuitive for decision makers. We suggest an alternative approach: reporting results in minimal important difference units (the smallest difference patients experience as important). This approach provides a potential solution to both the statistical and interpretational problems of existing methods. |
format | Text |
id | pubmed-2959099 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2010 |
publisher | BioMed Central |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-29590992010-10-22 Improving the interpretation of quality of life evidence in meta-analyses: the application of minimal important difference units Johnston, Bradley C Thorlund, Kristian Schünemann, Holger J Xie, Feng Murad, Mohammad Hassan Montori, Victor M Guyatt, Gordon H Health Qual Life Outcomes Research Systematic reviews of randomized trials that include measurements of health-related quality of life potentially provide critical information for patient and clinicians facing challenging health care decisions. When, as is most often the case, individual randomized trials use different measurement instruments for the same construct (such as physical or emotional function), authors typically report differences between intervention and control in standard deviation units (so-called "standardized mean difference" or "effect size"). This approach has statistical limitations (it is influenced by the heterogeneity of the population) and is non-intuitive for decision makers. We suggest an alternative approach: reporting results in minimal important difference units (the smallest difference patients experience as important). This approach provides a potential solution to both the statistical and interpretational problems of existing methods. BioMed Central 2010-10-11 /pmc/articles/PMC2959099/ /pubmed/20937092 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1477-7525-8-116 Text en Copyright ©2010 Johnston et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0 This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
spellingShingle | Research Johnston, Bradley C Thorlund, Kristian Schünemann, Holger J Xie, Feng Murad, Mohammad Hassan Montori, Victor M Guyatt, Gordon H Improving the interpretation of quality of life evidence in meta-analyses: the application of minimal important difference units |
title | Improving the interpretation of quality of life evidence in meta-analyses: the application of minimal important difference units |
title_full | Improving the interpretation of quality of life evidence in meta-analyses: the application of minimal important difference units |
title_fullStr | Improving the interpretation of quality of life evidence in meta-analyses: the application of minimal important difference units |
title_full_unstemmed | Improving the interpretation of quality of life evidence in meta-analyses: the application of minimal important difference units |
title_short | Improving the interpretation of quality of life evidence in meta-analyses: the application of minimal important difference units |
title_sort | improving the interpretation of quality of life evidence in meta-analyses: the application of minimal important difference units |
topic | Research |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2959099/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20937092 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1477-7525-8-116 |
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