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Reference Manual - IARC Screening Group

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<strong>Screening</strong> Test Qualities and Their InterpretationIndependence ofTest Assessments• This means that evaluators (particularly of the reference test) shouldbe unaware of the results of previous tests, because these results mayinfluence their assessment of the test being evaluated.Study Sample Size • Sample size affects the precision (i.e., width of the confidenceinterval) of test quality estimates and the statistical power to detect adifference in comparative test studies.• Quality diagnostic test studies should report not only the calculatedpoint estimates, but also sample sizes involved in each calculationand confidence limits for each estimate.• Summary measures across studies can best be done using metaanalysis.To qualify for meta-analysis, studies must report the rawdata and they should be free from verification bias. 6REFERENCESFahey MT, L Irwig and P Macaskill. 1995. American Journal ofEpidemiology 141(7): 680–689.Hulley SB and SR Cummings (eds). 1988. Designing Clinical Research.Lippincott Williams and Wilkins: Baltimore, Maryland.Jaeschke R, G Guyatt and DL Sackett. 1994. Users’ guide to the medicalliterature. III. How to use an article about a diagnostic test. A. Are theresults of the study valid? Journal of the American Medical Association271(5): 389–391.Last JM (ed). 1983. A Dictionary of Epidemiology. Oxford MedicalPublications: London.Rothman KJ. 1986. Modern Epidemiology. Little, Brown and Company:Boston, Massachusetts.Vogt WP. 1983. Dictionary of Statistics and Methodology. SagePublications: London.Weiss NS. 1986. Clinical Epidemiology: The Study of the Outcome ofIllness. Oxford University Press: New York.6 Meta-analysis: A quantitative approach whereby data from individual (different) research projects measuring thesame thing are used collectively as data points in a statistical analysis of that same measure (Last 1983; Vogt 1983).B-4 Cervical Cancer Prevention Guidelines for Low-Resource Settings

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