Application of tipping-point analysis to address missing data in clinical studies / 中华流行病学杂志

ABSTRACT

To use a visualized method,tipping-point analysis to address missing data in clinical study and discuss related problems.All the possible outcomes caused by missing data were listed and the tipping points where P-values of hypothesis test changed at 0.05 significant level were found out,then the ratio of P＜0.05 was calculated,reflecting the reliability of the study's result.Tipping-point analysis can be applied to both continuous and binary data to help find points where p-values are changed.The area of P＜0.05 of continuous data is 93.6％,indicating that the reliability of success of the study is large;and the area of P＜0.05 of binary data is 29.7％,reflecting that the reliability of success of the study is small.Tipping-point analysis,which provides a visualized evidence for decision making,is suitable for analyzing clinical studies with missing data.