Annals of Emergency Medicine
Volume 30, Issue 3 , Pages 307-310 , September 1997

What Is Confidence? Part 1: The Use and Interpretation of Confidence Intervals

Received 3 September 1996 ,Revised 23 April 1997 ,Accepted 28 April 1997.

References 

  1. Gardner MJ, Altman DG. Confidence intervals rather than P values: Estimation rather than hypothesis testing. BMJ. 1986;292:746–750
  2. Simon R. Confidence intervals for reporting results of clinical trials. Ann Intern Med. 1986;105:429–435
  3. Berry G. Statistical significance and confidence intervals. Med J Aust. 1986;144:618–619
  4. Braitman LE. Confidence intervals extract clinically useful information from data. Ann Intern Med. 1988;108:296–298
  5. Pocock SJ, Hughes MD. Estimation issues in clinical trials and overviews. Stat Med. 1990;9:657–671
  6. Braitman LE. Confidence intervals assess both clinical significance and statistical significance. Ann Intern Med. 1991;114:515–517
  7. Borenstein M. The case for confidence intervals in controlled clinical trials. Control Clin Trials. 1994;15:411–428
  8. Bailar JC, Mosteller F. Guidelines for statistical reporting in articles for medical journals. Ann Intern Med. 1988;108:266–273
  9. Young KD, Lewis RJ. What is confidence? Part II: Detailed definition and determination of confidence intervals. Ann Emerg Med. 1997;30:311–318
  10. Freiman JA, Chalmers TC, Smith H, et al.  The importance of beta, the type II error and sample size in the design and interpretation of the randomized control trial: Survey of 71 “negative” trials. N Engl J Med. 1978;299:690–694
  11. Brown CG, Kelen GD, Ashton JJ, et al.  The beta error and sample size determination in clinical trials in emergency medicine. Ann Emerg Med. 1987;16:183–187

☆ From the Department of Emergency Medicine, Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, Torrance, CA; and the UCLA School of Medicine, Los Angeles, CA.

☆☆ Reprint no. 47/1/84040

★ Address for reprints: Roger J Lewis, MD, PhD, Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, Department of Emergency Medicine, 1000 West Carson Street, Box 21, Torrance, CA 90509, 310-222-6741, Fax 310-782-1763, E-mail rlewis@humc.edu

PII: S0196-0644(97)70166-5

Annals of Emergency Medicine
Volume 30, Issue 3 , Pages 307-310 , September 1997

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