ArticleQuality of life research : an international journal of quality of life aspects of treatment, care and rehabilitation2024
Anchor-based minimal important difference values are often sensitive to the distribution of the change score.
Article in Quality of life research : an international journal of quality of life aspects of treatment, care and rehabilitation, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 3 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
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
3 citing papers in PubMed.
- Article
- Definition of Clinically Meaningful Thresholds for the Brief Esophageal Dysphagia Questionnaire and Eckardt Score: A Multicenter Psychometric Study.Neurogastroenterology and motility · 2026Article
- Patient-reported outcomes as markers and predictors of functional recovery in musculoskeletal rehabilitation.Rheumatology international · 2026Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
purposeAnchor-based studies are today the most popular approach to determine a minimal important difference value for an outcome variable. However, a variety of construction methods for such values do exist. This constitutes a challenge to the field. In order to distinguish between more or less adequate construction methods, meaningful minimal requirements can be helpful. For example, minimal important difference values should not reflect the intervention(s) the patients are exposed to in the study used for construction, as they should later allow to compare interventions. This requires that they are not sensitive to the distribution of the change score observed. This study aims at investigating to which degree established construction methods fulfil this minimal requirement.
methodsSix constructions methods were considered, covering very popular and recently suggested methods. The sensitivity of MID values to the distribution of the change score was investigated in a simulation study for these six construction methods.
resultsFive out of six construction methods turned out to yield MID values which are sensitive to the distribution of the change score to a degree that questions their usefulness. Insensitivity can be obtained by using construction methods based solely on an estimate of the conditional distribution of the anchor variable given the change score.
conclusionIn future the computation of MID values should be based on construction methods avoiding sensitivity to the distribution of the change score.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
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.