The ASA Statement and P -values in Epidemiologic Research

On March 7th, 2016, the American Statistical Association released its “ASA Statement on Statistical Significance and P -values,” which provided 6 principles to improve the conduct or interpretation of quantitative research. Misunderstanding and misuse of statistical tests and P -values were discussed many times in the epidemiologic field. In this paper, I gave a summary of the ASA statement and its translation process into Japanese. Then, I discussed how to avoid misunderstanding or misuse of statistical tests or P -values in epidemiologic observational studies.