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A cautionary note on the use of simulation procedures for analyzing contingency tables containing small expected cell frequencies
Author(s) -
Robles Jaime R.,
van den Oord Edwin J. C. G.
Publication year - 2006
Publication title -
american journal of medical genetics part b: neuropsychiatric genetics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.393
H-Index - 126
eISSN - 1552-485X
pISSN - 1552-4841
DOI - 10.1002/ajmg.b.30268
Subject(s) - contingency table , exact test , exact statistics , statistics , statistical hypothesis testing , contingency , test (biology) , computer science , simple (philosophy) , mathematics , paleontology , philosophy , linguistics , epistemology , biology
Abstract A comparison of a simple simulation procedure and exact tests for tables used in psychiatric genetic studies is performed, with focus on tables with small expected cell counts. The study shows that naive simulation procedures using uniform random numbers, could lead to conservative results, as compared with Fisher exact test for contingency tables, thus discarding as non‐significant tables that are significant according to the exact test. Exact tests are recommended as an alternative to naive simulation for evaluating the statistical significance of contingency tables with small expected cell counts. © 2006 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.