Confidence intervals and sample size planning for optimal cutpoints.

ABSTRACT: Various methods are available to determine optimal cutpoints for diagnostic measures. Unfortunately, many authors fail to report the precision at which these optimal cutpoints are being estimated and use sample sizes that are not suitable to achieve an adequate precision. The aim of the present study is to evaluate methods to estimate the variance of cutpoint estimations based on published descriptive statistics ('post-hoc') and to discuss sample size planning for estimating cutpoints. We performed a simulation study using widely-used methods to optimize the Youden index (empirical, normal, and transformed normal method) and three methods to determine confidence intervals (the delta method, the parametric bootstrap, and the nonparametric bootstrap). We found that both the delta method and

SUBMITTER: Thiele C 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9810177 | biostudies-literature | 2023

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature