Question about statistical significance

[medicinehopeful]

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hey all,

i'm not very good with statistics and had a question (however dumb it may be).

Suppose a trial is testing reduction in breast cancer mortality. The results are that the relative risk of breast cancer mortality is 0.77 with 95% CI at 0.53-1.11.

how do i know if these results are statistically significant?

thanks!

 

[RxnMan]

hey all,

i'm not very good with statistics and had a question (however dumb it may be).

Suppose a trial is testing reduction in breast cancer mortality. The results are that the relative risk of breast cancer mortality is 0.77 with 95% CI at 0.53-1.11.

how do i know if these results are statistically significant?

thanks!

you are 95% sure that the range of RR is between 0.53 and 1.11. So your exposure could be anything from protective (at 0.53 you're ~half risk) to harmful (1.11 or 10/9ths risk). Since you can't tell which it is, you do not have a statistically significant result.

The short way of saying this is any RR with a CI that contains 1 is not significant.