Absolutely relative: how research results are summarized can affect treatment decisions.

PURPOSE To determine whether alternative methods of presenting a contrast between the same two quantities in descriptions of research results could lead to different treatment decisions by physicians. SUBJECTS AND METHODS We conducted a survey of practicing physicians and of faculty and fellows in training programs in clinical epidemiology and social science research methods. Each questionnaire presented results from a published study of either hypertension or hypercholesterolemia in two different ways: once as the relative change in the outcome rate and once as the absolute change in the outcome rate. We asked respondents to read each summary and indicate how the information contained in the summary would influence decisions about treatment. RESULTS Of the 235 physicians who completed the questionnaire, 108 (46%) gave different responses to the same results presented in different ways. Of these, 97 (89.8%) indicated a stronger inclination to treat patients after reading of the relative change in the outcome rate (p less than 0.0001). CONCLUSION The manner of presentation of results can influence physicians' judgments about the treatment of patients.

[1]  A. Weissler,et al.  The need for clarification of percent risk reduction data in clinical cardiovascular trial reports. , 1989, Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

[2]  A. Tversky,et al.  On the elicitation of preferences for alternative therapies. , 1982, The New England journal of medicine.

[3]  Daniel Kahneman,et al.  The Framing of Decisions and the Rationality of Choice. , 1980 .

[4]  D L Sackett,et al.  An assessment of clinically useful measures of the consequences of treatment. , 1988, The New England journal of medicine.

[5]  S. Pocock,et al.  Statistical problems in the reporting of clinical trials. A survey of three medical journals. , 1987, The New England journal of medicine.

[6]  R. Leblond.  Improving structured abstracts. , 1989, Annals of internal medicine.

[7]  D. Sackett,et al.  The Ends of Human Life: Medical Ethics in a Liberal Polity , 1992, Annals of Internal Medicine.

[8]  T. Pickering.  Treatment of mild hypertension and the reduction of cardiovascular mortality: the 'of or by' dilemma. , 1983, JAMA.

[9]  R B Haynes,et al.  Problems in the handling of clinical and research evidence by medical practitioners. , 1983, Archives of internal medicine.

[10]  J D Emerson,et al.  Analyzing data from ordered categories. , 1984, The New England journal of medicine.

[11]  D. Redelmeier.  Cognitive Psychology and Medical Judgment , 1991, Medical decision making : an international journal of the Society for Medical Decision Making.

[12]  Frederick Mosteller,et al.  Reporting on methods in clinical trials. , 1982, The New England journal of medicine.

[13]  A. Tversky,et al.  The framing of decisions and the psychology of choice. , 1981, Science.

[14]  W. Casscells,et al.  Interpretation by physicians of clinical laboratory results. , 1978, The New England journal of medicine.

[15]  A. Tversky,et al.  Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases , 1974, Science.

[16]  A. Feinstein.  An additional basic science for clinical medicine: III. The challenges of comparison and measurement. , 1983, Annals of internal medicine.

[17]  J. H. Comroe.  The road from research to new diagnosis and therapy. , 1978, Science.

[18]  H. Fineberg,et al.  When doctors meet numbers. , 1981, The American journal of medicine.

[19]  A. Feinstein.  Fraud, distortion, delusion, and consensus: the problems of human and natural deception in epidemiologic science. , 1988, The American journal of medicine.

[20]  T C Chalmers,et al.  A method for assessing the quality of a randomized control trial. , 1981, Controlled clinical trials.

[21]  R. Likert.  “Technique for the Measurement of Attitudes, A” , 2022, The SAGE Encyclopedia of Research Design.