Sample size determination is an important issue in the experimental design of biomedical research. Because of the complexity of RNA-seq experiments, however, the field currently lacks a sample size method widely applicable to differential expression studies utilising RNA-seq technology. In this report, we propose several methods for sample size calculation for single-gene differential expressio...

BACKGROUND Cardiovascular magnetic resonance feature tracking (CMR-FT) is a novel tissue tracking technique developed for noninvasive assessment of myocardial motion and deformation. This preliminary study aimed to evaluate the observer's reproducibility of CMR-FT in a small animal (mouse) model and define sample size calculation for future trials. METHODS Six C57BL/6 J mice were selected fro...

OBJECTIVE To assess systematically the reporting of sample size calculation in randomized controlled trials (RCTs) in 5 leading journals in the field of physical medicine and rehabilitation (PM&R). DATA SOURCES The data source was full reports of RCTs in 5 leading PM&R journals (Journal of Rehabilitation Medicine, Archives of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, American Journal of Physical ...

BACKGROUND A key aspect of the design of randomised controlled trials (RCTs) is determining the sample size. It is important that the trial sample size is appropriately calculated. The required sample size will differ by clinical area, for instance, due to the prevalence of the condition and the choice of primary outcome. Additionally, it will depend upon the choice of target difference assumed...

BACKGROUND The growing move towards patient-centred care has led to substantial research into improving the health literacy skills of patients and members of the public. Hence, there is a pressing need to assess the methodology used in contemporary randomized controlled trials (RCTs) of interventions directed at health literacy, in particular the quality (risk of bias), and the types of outcome...

INTRODUCTION Small-study effects refer to the fact that trials with limited sample sizes are more likely to report larger beneficial effects than large trials. However, this has never been investigated in critical care medicine. Thus, the present study aimed to examine the presence and extent of small-study effects in critical care medicine. METHODS Critical care meta-analyses involving rando...

We compare two sample size calculation approaches for analysis of covariance with one covariate. Exact simulation studies are conducted to compare the sample size calculation based on an approach by Borm et al. (2007) (referred to as the B approach) and an exact approach (referred to as the F approach). Although the B approach and the F approach have similar performance when the correlation coe...

BACKGROUND Low mood is a common mental health problem affecting up to 121 million people worldwide and is common in students, particularly international students. Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) is known to be effective as a treatment for low mood and anxiety when delivered one to one by an expert practitioner, however this can be expensive and many services have waiting lists and delayed a...

Determining power and sample size in neuroimaging studies is a challenging task because of the massive multiple comparisons among tens of thousands of correlated voxels. To facilitate this task, we propose a power analysis method based on random field theory (RFT) by modeling signal areas within images as non-central random field. With this framework, power can be calculated for specific areas ...

Sample size calculation plays an important role in clinical research. In clinical research, a sufficient number of patients is necessary to ensure the validity and the success of an intended trial. From a statistical point of view, if a clinically meaningful difference between a study treatment and a control truly exists, such a difference can always be detected with an arbitrary power as long ...