Department of Veterinary Clinical Sciences, School of Veterinary Medicine, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, USA.
Vet Comp Oncol. 2022 Sep;20(3):732-736. doi: 10.1111/vco.12811. Epub 2022 Mar 16.
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 .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 2 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 > .05. Of the total 36 'trend' statements noted, six were not accompanied by p-values and eight were associated with p-values >.10. Similarly, four of the 16 'tended to' statements were not accompanied by p-values, and one was associated with a p-value >.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 de-emphasis of p-value proximity to an arbitrary threshold, and effect size reporting) for interpreting results in veterinary oncology research.
关于“统计学意义”，诸如“趋势”和“倾向于”之类的表述模棱两可，反映了人们对 p 值接近 0.05 的持续关注。p 值本身并不能提供衡量效应大小或其他判断临床重要性所需的信息。本研究的目的是检查兽医和比较肿瘤学杂志 2 年来的原始研究文章，并描述“趋势”陈述的使用情况。对文章进行了“趋势”和“倾向于”陈述的审查，每篇文章陈述的数量，是否提供了 p 值和/或 95%置信区间来伴随这些陈述，以及 p 值是多少（如果提供）。我们注意到，15.8%的文章至少包含一条“趋势”或“倾向于”陈述，以描述组间差异。具体来说，10.5%的文章使用这些陈述来描述差异，而没有提供相关的 p 值，或者 p 值>0.05。在注意到的 36 个“趋势”陈述中，有 6 个没有伴随 p 值，有 8 个与 p 值>0.10 相关。同样，在 16 个“倾向于”陈述中，有 4 个没有伴随 p 值，有 1 个与 p 值>0.10 相关。这些数据表明，与人类肿瘤学文献相比，兽医肿瘤学文献中对 p 值接近的重视程度相似。此外，这些发现强调了“趋势”陈述的模糊性，并支持为兽医肿瘤学研究中解释结果制定额外的指南（例如，强调 p 值接近任意阈值的重要性，以及报告效应大小）。
