Measure of Association Dependent on Sensitivity and Specificity of Diagnostic Screening Tests in a Study Population
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.60787/tnhj.v24i1.776Keywords:
sensitivity, specificity, traditional odds ratio, diagnostic screening tests, state of nature or condition, clinical trialAbstract
Background: The traditional odds ratio and relative risk cannot strictly speaking properly and validly be used because in them, the number of subjects testing positive and negative among subjects known or believed not to have a condition in nature usually are not known and hence the total number of subjects testing positive and negative are not also completely known. Paper proposes, develops, and presents a measure of the strength of association between test results and condition in a population, by using sensitivity and specificity of diagnostic screening tests that are independent of the population under study.
Method: A retrospective study was carried out. The proposed measure of association which always lies between -1 and 1 inclusively enables the researcher to determine not only if an association exists between test results and state of nature or condition in a population and if such an association exists, whether it is positive and direct or negative and indirect thereby giving the measure an advantage over and above the traditional odds ratio method.
Result: The proposed method is easier to interpret and understand than those from the traditional odd ratio approach. For comparison and completeness, it also develops modified sample estimate of the traditional odd ratio and its sample variance from observable sample data. The likelihood ratio showed that the test is very informative.
Conclusion: The proposed measure of association is shown to be at least as efficient and hence as powerful as the traditional odds ratio. The modified traditional odds ratio performs better than the traditional odds ratio. The likelihood ratios are at least as efficient as the proposed method but better than the traditional odd ratio.
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