Empirical assessment of fragility index based on a large database of clinical studies in the Cochrane Library.

ABSTRACT:

Rationale aims and objectives

The fragility index (FI) and fragility quotient (FQ) are increasingly used measures for assessing the robustness of clinical studies with binary outcomes in terms of statistical significance. The FI is the minimum number of event status modifications that can alter a study result's statistical significance (or nonsignificance), and the FQ is calculated as the FI divided by the study's total sample size. The literature has no widely recognized criteria for interpreting the fragility measures' magnitudes. This article aims to provide an empirical assessment for the FI and FQ based on a large database of clinical studies in the Cochrane Library.

Methods

We explored the overall empirical distributions of the FI and FQ based on five common methods (F

SUBMITTER: Xing A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9928801 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature