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Public Health & Epidemiology vocabulary · Bias, Causation and Data Analysis

Confidence interval

Meaning in public health & epidemiology, with examples

nounCommon term

In public health & epidemiology, confidence interval means: A range of values around an estimate that shows how precise it is; a 95% confidence interval is calculated so that, if a study were repeated many times, 95% of such intervals would contain the true value.

In Turkish: güven aralığı

How it is used

Written 95% CI and read 'ninety-five percent confidence interval'. A narrow interval means a precise estimate. If the CI for a relative risk or odds ratio includes 1, the result is usually not statistically significant.

Example sentences

  1. Prevalence was 12.4% (95% confidence interval 10.9 to 13.9).

  2. The confidence interval is very wide because the sample was small.

Common collocations

  • 95% confidence interval
  • narrow confidence interval
  • wide confidence interval
  • the confidence interval includes 1
  • relative riskThe risk of an outcome in an exposed group divided by the risk in an unexposed group; a value of 2 means the exposed group has twice the risk.
  • odds ratioA measure of association that compares the odds of an exposure among cases with the odds among controls, or the odds of an outcome in two groups.
  • meta-analysisA statistical method that combines the numerical results of several similar studies to produce one overall estimate of an effect.
  • biasA systematic error in how a study is designed, carried out or analysed that pushes its results away from the truth in one direction.

This word in other fields

The same English word can have a different meaning in another field:

More terms: Bias, Causation and Data Analysis

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This page explains English vocabulary for learners. It is not medical advice.