Minimal important changes in standard deviation units are highly variable and no universally applicable value can be determined

OBJECTIVES: This study aims to describe the distribution of anchor-based minimal important change (MIC) estimates in standard deviation (SD) units and examine if the robustness of such estimates depends on the specific SD used or on the methodological credibility of the anchor-based estimates. DESIGN AND SETTING: We included all anchor-based MIC estimates from studies published in MEDLINE and relevant literature databases upto October 2018. …