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help for bmjcip                                                  (Roger Newson)
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Format confidence intervals and P-values for medical journals

        bmjcip estvarname ciminvarname cimaxvarname [ pvarname ] [ ,
                     cformat(%fmt) ]

    where estvarname, ciminvarname, cimaxvarname and pvarname are numeric
    variable names, and %fmt is a numeric display format.


Description

    bmjcip reformats a list of numeric variables, containing estimates,
    confidence limits and (optionally) P-values, to string variables,
    containing the same values formatted for presentation in medical
    journals.  The new string variables replace the old numeric variables,
    and have the same names, variable labels, and positions in the dataset.
    bmjcip is usually used in output datasets (or resultssets) produced by
    the parmest package, and the reformatted string variables are later
    output using the listtex package for input to Microsoft Word.  It
    requires the sdecode package in order to work.  The sdecode, parmest and 
    listtex packages can all be downloaded from SSC.


Options

    cformat(%fmt) specifies a display format, used for the estimates and
        confidence limits.  However, bmjcip also adds parentheses and commas
        to the confidence limits, as expected by medical journals.  The
        P-value is formatted using a separate rule, not corresponding exactly
        to any Stata display format.  (See Remarks below.)


Remarks

    Guidelines for presentation of confidence intervals in medical journals
    is given in Altman et al. (2000).  The name bmjcip was chosen because
    these guidelines were written originally for the British Medical Journal
    (BMJ) group of journals.

    The presentation of P-values is still subject to some controversy, even
    among statisticians.  However, bmjcip presents a P-value of 1 as 1.0, a
    P-value less than 1 and no less than .00001 as a left-justified decimal
    number with no zero before the decimal point, and a P-value below 0.00001
    and greater than 0 in the format x.yx10-z (where x and y are digits and z
    is an integer), and a P-value of 0 as 0.  Note that, if the P-values are
    output by listtex and converted into Microsoft Word tables, then the user
    must convert each "-z" to a superscript by hand.

    If the user wishes to keep the original numeric variables, then the user
    may use clonevar to make new numeric variables that are copies of the
    original variables, and then reformat these to string variables using
    bmjcip.

    bmjcip is not a satisfactory long-term solution to the problem of
    formatting confidence intervals and P-values.  However, most medical
    sector scientists want to publish tables in the BMJ and other medical
    periodicals without waiting for such a solution.


Examples

        . bmjcip estimate min95 max95 p

        . bmjcip estimate min95 max95 p, cformat(%10.3f)

        . bmjcip estimate min95 max95, cf(%10.1f)


Author

    Roger Newson, National Heart and Lung Institute, Imperial College London,
    UK.
    Email: r.newson@imperial.ac.uk


References

    Altman, D. G., D. Machin, T. N Bryant and M. J Gardner.  2000.
        Statistics with Confidence.  2nd ed.  London, UK: British Medical
        Journal.


Also see

     Manual: [D] destring, [D] clonevar, [D] format
    On-line: help for tostring, destring, clonevar, format
             help for sdecode, parmest, listtex if installed