Misinterpretations of Significance Testing Results Near the P-Value Threshold in the Urologic Literature.

We evaluated abstracts from 15 urology journals published within the years 2000-2021 and provided a quantitative measure of a common statistical mistake-misconstruing the function of null hypothesis testing by reporting “a trend toward significance.” Materials and methods We performed an audit of 15 urology journals, looking at articles published from January 1, 2000, to January 1, 2022.

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To do this, we examined the frequency of the use of the word "trend" to describe almost significant data in abstracts of urologic literature from 2000 to 2021.

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CI=0.65-1.08); and when the authors directly mention that the data did not reach statistical significance.

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Additionally, we searched for "almost significant," "near significant," and "near significance." However, these terms did not add to our abstract pool.

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Reporting a metric as “trending toward significance” is a misinterpretation of the p-value.

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