BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE Various ways exist to display the effectiveness of medical treatment options. This study examined various psychiatric, medical and allied professionals' understanding and perceived usefulness of eight effect size indices for presenting both dichotomous and continuous outcome data. METHODS We surveyed 1316 participants from 13 countries using an online questionnaire. We presented hypothetical treatment effects of interventions versus placebo concerning chronic pain using eight different effect size measures. For each index, the participants had to judge the magnitude of the shown effect, to indicate how certain they felt about their own answer and how useful they found the given effect size index. FINDINGS Overall, 762 (57.9%) participants fully completed the questionnaire. In terms of understanding, the best results emerged when both the control event rate (CER) and the experimental event rate (EER) were presented. The difference in minimal importance difference units (MID unit) was understood worst. Respondents also found CER and EER to be the most useful presentation approach while they rated MID unit as the least useful. Confidence in the risk ratio ranked high, even though it was rather poorly understood. CONCLUSIONS AND CLINICAL IMPLICATIONS For dichotomous outcomes, presenting the effects in terms of the CER and EER could lead to the most correct interpretation. Relative measures including the risk ratio must be supplemented with absolute measures such as the CER and EER. Effects on continuous outcomes were better understood through standardised mean differences than mean differences. These can also be supplemented by dichotomised CER and EER.

中文翻译：

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了解效应大小：一项针对精神病学家、心理学家、其他医学专业的医生、牙医和其他卫生专业人员的国际在线调查。


背景和目的 存在多种方式来显示医疗治疗方案的有效性。这项研究检查了各种精神病学、医学和相关专业人士对八个效应大小指数的理解和感知有用性，以呈现二分法和连续结果数据。方法 我们使用在线问卷调查了来自 13 个国家的 1316 名参与者。我们使用八种不同的效果大小衡量指标，提出了针对慢性疼痛的干预措施与安慰剂的假设治疗效果。对于每个指数，参与者必须判断所显示效果的大小，以表明他们对自己的答案的确定程度以及他们发现给定效果大小指数的有用程度。结果 总体而言，762 名（57.9%）参与者完整完成了调查问卷。就理解而言，当同时提供控制事件率（CER）和实验事件率（EER）时，会出现最佳结果。最小重要性差异单位（MID 单位）的差异被理解得最差。受访者还发现 CER 和 EER 是最有用的演示方法，而他们将 MID 单位评为最无用的。尽管人们对此知之甚少，但对风险比率的信心排名很高。结论和临床意义 对于二分结果，以 CER 和 EER 的形式呈现效果可以得出最正确的解释。包括风险比在内的相对指标必须辅以 CER 和 EER 等绝对指标。通过标准化平均差比平均差可以更好地理解对连续结果的影响。这些也可以通过二分 CER 和 EER 来补充。