clinicalsignificance: Clinical Significance Analyses of Intervention Studies in R

Abstract

The analysis of clinical significance is helpful to decide if an intervention leads to practically relevant or meaningful changes for individual patients which is clearly different from the analysis of statistical significance. However, the framework is used rarely and inconsistently. We introduce the R package clinicalsignificance to harness the use of clinical significance analysis of intervention trials in clinical research. This package provides all relevant methods to calculate and present analyses of clinical significance in a consistent form and easy to use implementation. Despite its shortcomings, clinical significance analyses are a valuable tool to gain more insight into intended and potential unintended intervention effects and they may improve the interpretation and comparability of intervention trial results. Lastly, analyses of clinical significance may guide researchers and policy makers in determining which interventions are clinically effective.