Related Experiment Video
Updated: Apr 16, 2026

Assessment and Communication for People with Disorders of Consciousness
Published on: August 1, 2017
A primer on confidence intervals in psychopharmacology
1Department of Psychopharmacology, National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences, Bangalore, India candrade@psychiatrist.com.
Abstract:
Research papers and research summaries frequently present results in the form of data accompanied by 95% confidence intervals (CIs). Not all students and clinicians know how to interpret CIs. This article provides a nontechnical, nonmathematical discussion on how to understand and glean information from CIs; all explanations are accompanied by simple examples. A statistically accurate explanation about CIs is also provided. CIs are differentiated from standard deviations, standard errors, and confidence levels. The interpretation of narrow and wide CIs is discussed. Factors that influence the width of a CI are listed. Explanations are provided for how CIs can be used to assess statistical significance. The significance of overlapping and nonoverlapping CIs is considered. It is concluded that CIs are far more informative than, say, mere P values when drawing conclusions about a result.
Related Concept Videos
Interpretation of Confidence Intervals
Confidence intervals have confidence coefficients that are crucial for their interpretation. The most common confidence coefficients are 0.90, 0.95, and 0.99, which can be written as percentages–90%, 95%, and 99%, respectively.
Suppose a person calculates a confidence interval with a confidence coefficient of 0.95. In that case, they can...
Confidence Intervals
A confidence...
Uncertainty: Confidence Intervals
Confidence Coefficient
Confidence Interval for Estimating Population Mean
A confidence interval for the mean is a range of values that provides an estimate of the population mean. As the...
Types of Biopharmaceutical Studies: Controlled and Non-Controlled Approaches
Non-controlled studies, commonly employed for initial exploration, lack a control group, rendering them susceptible to biases and external influences. In contrast,...

