Whether a result is large enough to matter for a patient, not just statistically real.
Clinical significance refers to whether an observed effect is meaningful for patient care — for example, large enough to change symptoms, function, or a treatment decision. It is distinct from statistical significance, which only indicates that a result is unlikely to be due to chance and can occur even with trivially small effects, especially in large samples. There's no single agreed threshold for clinical significance; it's usually judged against benchmarks like the minimal clinically important difference (MCID), patient values, and context, so different clinicians or studies may reasonably disagree on where the line sits.
This guide was auto-drafted and is pending editorial review.