What are some examples of confidence intervals in research?

What are some examples of confidence intervals in research?

Confidence intervals are used to express the uncertainty of a sample estimate. For example, in a clinical trial, if a new drug is tested and the average effect is found to be 5 units with a 95% confidence interval of (3, 7), it means we are 95% confident that the true effect lies between 3 and 7 units.

Can you give another example?

Sure! In a survey measuring customer satisfaction, if the average satisfaction score is 8 out of 10 with a 90% confidence interval of (7.5, 8.5), it indicates that we can be 90% confident that the true average satisfaction score for all customers is between 7.5 and 8.5.

How do researchers determine the confidence interval?

Researchers determine the confidence interval by calculating the standard error of the sample estimate and then using a critical value from the statistical distribution (like the t-distribution) to create the interval around the estimate.

What does a wider confidence interval indicate?

A wider confidence interval indicates more uncertainty about the estimate. It suggests that the sample size may be small or that there is high variability in the data.