The use of 'trend' statements in veterinary oncology literature.
The use of 'trend' statements in veterinary oncology literature.
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DOI：
10.1111/vco.12811
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发表时间：
2022-09
影响因子：
2.1
通讯作者：
Withers, Sita S.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Groves, Priscilla K.;Liu, Chin-Chi;Geels, Olivia R.;Withers, Sita S.
关于“统计显着性”的“趋向”和“倾向于”等表述含糊不清，反映了对 p 值接近 0.05 的持续关注。 p 值本身并不能提供效应大小的衡量标准或判断临床重要性所需的其他信息。这项研究的目的是检查《兽医和比较肿瘤学》杂志上两年来的原始研究文章，并描述“趋势”陈述的使用。审查文章的“趋势”和“倾向于”陈述、每篇论文的陈述数量、这些陈述是否提供了 p 值和/或 95% 置信区间，以及 p 值是多少（如果提供）。我们注意到 15.8% 的文章至少包含一个“趋势”或“倾向于”陈述来描述群体之间的差异。具体来说，10.5% 的文章使用这些陈述来描述差异，但没有提供相关的 p 值，或者 p > 0.05。在总共 36 个“趋势”陈述中，有 6 个没有伴随 p 值，8 个与 p 值 >0.10 相关。同样，16 个“倾向于”陈述中有 4 个没有伴随 p 值，其中一个与 p 值 >0.10 相关。这些数据表明，与人类肿瘤学文献相比，兽医肿瘤学文献同样强调 p 值接近性。此外，这些发现强调了“趋势”陈述的模糊性，并支持制定额外的指南（例如不再强调 p 值接近任意阈值和效应大小报告）来解释兽医肿瘤学研究的结果。
Statements such as “trend towards” and “tended to” in regards to “statistical significance” are ambiguous and reflect the continued focus on proximity of p-values to 0.05. By themselves, p-values do not provide a measure of effect size or other information needed to judge clinical importance. The goal of this study was to examine original research articles in the journal Veterinary and Comparative Oncology over two years, and describe the use of “trend” statements. Articles were reviewed for “trend” and “tended to” statements, the number of statements made per paper, whether a p-value and/or 95% confidence interval was provided to accompany these statements, and what the p-value was (if provided). We noted 15.8% of articles included at least one “trend” or “tended to” statement to describe differences between groups. Specifically, 10.5% of articles used these statements to describe differences without providing the associated p-value, or where p > 0.05. Of the total 36 “trend” statements noted, six were not accompanied by p-values and eight were associated with p-values >0.10. Similarly, four of the 16 “tended to” statements were not accompanied by p-values, and one was associated with a p-value >0.10. These data reveal a similar emphasis on p-value proximity in veterinary oncology literature compared to that of human oncology literature. Furthermore, these findings highlight the ambiguity of “trend” statements and support the development of additional guidelines (e.g. the deemphasis of p-value proximity to an arbitrary threshold, and effect size reporting) for interpreting results in veterinary oncology research.