Lecture Flashcards
What is equipoise?
the assumption that there is not one better intervention present during the design of a RCT
what are the types of evidence?
trials and studies
what are trials?
involves an intervention -> measure an outcome
gold standard = randomised double blinded controlled trial
what are studies?
observational, no intervention
Diagnostic - how good a diagnostic test is
Prognostic - look at rf on outcomes often of cohort study
Case control - retrospective, two groups of different outcomes
Cohort study - group of people. prospective
what levels of evidence are 1a/1b?
Ia: systematic review/meta-analysis of RCTs
Ib: at least one rct
what level of evidence are IIa/IIb?
IIa: at least one well-designed controlled study without randomisation
IIb: at least one well-designed quasi-experimental study such as a cohort study
what is a quasi experiment?
subject to concerns regarding internal validity, because the treatment and control groups may not be comparable at baseline. With random assignment, study participants have the same chance of being assigned to the intervention group or the comparison group
what level of evidence is III?
III: well designed, non-experimental descriptive study eg comparative study, correlation, case-control study, case series
what level of evidence is IV?
opinions and/or clinical experience
What are the levels of evidence?
Ia (highest)
IV (lowest
What is phase 1 of trials?
safety testing of new med on few (often) healthy volunteers - establish side effect profiles
What is phase 2 of trials?
testing on larger groups of disease patients - establish idea of efficacy and further side effects
what is phase 3 of trials?
large comparison trials on disease patients - for robust efficacy data in comparison to existing treatment
what is efficacy?
the ability to produce a desired or intended result
what is a null hypothesis? (Ho)
there is no difference between the two groups, any difference between these two groups is due to chance
what is the alternative hypothesis?
there is a difference between the two groups
what is the p value?
probability of detecting a difference with a priori assumption that the null hypothesis is true
what is the p value set at?
5% or 0.05
what does it mean if p value <0.05?
consider such a low probability that there must be an error in the logical argument - the error is considered to be in the priori assumption, therefore the null hypothesis cannot be true so the alternative hypothesis must be true
what are the limitations of hypothesis testing?
the amount of difference is not stated simple binary (yes/no) answer
what is the estimation?
we can never know true difference between two groups in a population so we take a sample - estimate the difference between the two groups using the data from the sample
what is the absolute difference?
the difference found in a study = estimation of the whole population
what is the true difference?
the actual difference in population
how can the estimation be presented?
- as a number
- as an absolute difference
- as a ratio
- as a proportion
what are confidence intervals?
is the range around the estimation
normal 95% CI = the range between which there is 95% chance that the true value will lie
what are the units of no effect in confidence intervals?
with absolute difference - no difference would be 0
with a ratio - no difference would be 1
what is good about confidence intervals?
width of interval indicates PRECISION of estimate
can be used to estimate type 2 statistical error
indicates lack of statistical significance if interval crosses unit of no effect
gives info of size and direction of difference
what is a type 2 statistical error?
the study has shown that there is no statistically significant difference in the groups but in the real world there might be (false negative)
what is the primary outcome?
the variable outcome of most interest
any difference in outcome between the groups is believe to be due to the intervention
what is the minimum clinically important difference?
the least difference outcome that is clinically important -
looking at the clinical significance with statistical significance
what is the intervention?
what we do to the patient that can change things
what are time points to measure?
when the outcome is measured
what is the power of a study?
the probability that a trial will detect a difference that truly exists
what does the power calculation look at?
type 1 error: finding a difference when there isn’t one in real life (false positive) = ALPHA
type 2 error: not finding a difference when there is one (false negative) = BETA
power is dependent on what four things?
- probability of T1 error (0.05) [ALPHA]
- sample size
- standard deviation of sample
- minimal clinically significant difference