Presenting statistical uncertainty in trends and dose-response relations

Abstract

When one estimates the effects of a polytomous exposure, it is common practice to express all effects relative to a baseline or reference level. Certain authors have challenged this practice and proposed alternatives, which we review here. One alternative, the 'floating absolute risk' method, can supply useful statistics and trend graphs, but it does not yield valid confidence intervals for relative risks. All categorical methods have further shortcomings when the exposure is continuous, however. These shortcomings can be addressed by plotting or tabulating confidence limits for points on a flexible curve fitted to the uncategorized data.