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Quantitative decision guides

Practical, careful guidance for planning, measurement, modeling, validation, and reproducible quantitative work.

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79 decision guides

Published September 30, 202514 min read

Noninferiority vs Equivalence vs Superiority Trials: What Researchers Commonly Get Wrong

Superiority, noninferiority, and equivalence trials answer different clinical questions and require different hypotheses, boundaries, and interpretations. This Resource explains why a nonsignificant superiority result does not establish noninferiority or equivalence and shows how prespecified margins and confidence intervals determine what a study can support.

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Published September 13, 202516 min read

Interim Analysis and Early Stopping in Clinical Trials: Why Repeated Looks at the Data Need Planning

Interim analyses become part of trial design whenever accumulating results can influence whether a clinical trial continues. This Resource explains why repeated efficacy looks require planned sequential methods, how efficacy and futility differ, what should be prespecified, and how early stopping affects interpretation, precision, and treatment-effect estimates.

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Published September 8, 202518 min read

Clustered and Correlated Data: Why Ordinary Regression Can Give Misleading Results

A regression dataset can contain many rows without containing the same number of independent pieces of information. This Resource explains how to recognize clustered or correlated observations and how the research question, outcome distribution, clustering structure, and target interpretation guide the choice among GEE, linear mixed models, generalized linear mixed models, and other correlated-data methods.

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Published September 5, 202512 min read

Choosing the Right Effect Size for Meta-Analysis: Means, Binary Outcomes and Correlations

Learn how to choose an appropriate effect-size metric for meta-analysis when studies report continuous outcomes, binary outcomes, or correlations. The Resource explains how the target estimand, measurement scale, substantive comparability, effect direction, and sampling variance affect the choice and interpretation of a common effect-size scale.

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Published August 17, 202519 min read

Fixed-Effect vs Random-Effects Meta-Analysis: How Researchers Should Choose

Choosing between fixed-effect and random-effects meta-analysis depends on what effects the studies represent and what population of effects the analysis is intended to describe. This Resource explains how that choice changes study weights, uncertainty, heterogeneity interpretation, subgroup analyses, meta-regression, and the scope of inference.

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Published June 19, 202517 min read

Can You Compare Group Scores Yet? Measurement Invariance Before Group Comparisons

Measurement invariance testing determines whether group comparisons are interpretable by assessing whether a construct is measured sufficiently equivalently across groups. This Resource explains the CFA hierarchy from configural through strict invariance and the distinct MICOM workflow required for PLS-SEM.

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A general guide cannot see your full study

Your design, measurement, data structure, assumptions, and existing output can change the appropriate statistical decision. If the choice is still unclear, discuss the study in context.