ArticleInternational journal of methods in psychiatric research2018
Tracing scientific reasoning in psychiatry: Reporting of statistical inference in abstracts of top journals 1975-2015.
Article in International journal of methods in psychiatric research, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 6 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
6 citing papers in PubMed.
- Statistical inference and effect measures in abstracts of major HIV and AIDS journals, 1987-2022: A systematic review.Global epidemiology · 2025Review
- Conclusions reported in European Orthodontic Congress poster abstracts: are they based on clinical or statistical significance?European journal of orthodontics · 2025Article
- Statistical inference and effect measures in abstracts of randomized controlled trials, 1975-2021. A systematic review.European journal of epidemiology · 2023Review
- Reporting of Statistical Inference in Abstracts of Major Cancer Journals, 1990 to 2020.JAMA network open · 2022Article
- Reporting of data analysis methods in psychiatric journals: Trends from 1996 to 2018.International journal of methods in psychiatric research · 2019Article
- Tracing scientific reasoning in psychiatry: Reporting of statistical inference in abstracts of top journals 1975-2015.International journal of methods in psychiatric research · 2018Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
objectiveTo analyze the reporting of statistical inference in psychiatry.
methodWe searched 63,928 abstracts, published in 15 leading psychiatric journals (1975-2015).
resultsMedian abstract length increased from 664 (1975) to 1,323 (2015) characters, and median use of numbers from two to 14/abstract. A total of 3.6% of all abstracts exclusively contained significance terminology in a nonstatistical sense, and 45% showed some form of statistical inference, increasing from 26% to 52%. In those abstracts, statistical inference based on thresholds was dominant. Its proportion decreased from 99% to 66%, but with rising numbers of articles, figures rose from 1,095 to 2,382. Although reporting p values without thresholds did not appear 40 years ago and remains rare, combining precise p values with thresholds is now common. In 2010-2015, 86% of abstracts contained p values or p value thresholds, 22% confidence intervals, and 7% confidence intervals only. Results varied across journals.
conclusionThere is a moderate shift from reporting p values along set thresholds, such as p ≤ 0.05, to presenting precise p values and confidence intervals, but not as pronounced as in epidemiology and general medicine. The long debate on estimation over testing has not led to a substantial replacement of p values by confidence intervals. Null hypothesis testing ("p ≤ .05") dominates statistical thinking.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.