Reporting Risk: from Math to Meaning

In this article, we discuss risk reporting and presentation in observational healthcare research. Reported measures of risk should facilitate clinical understanding. Although odds ratios are mathematically advantageous, they do not facilitate clinical understanding. Adjusted relative risk and risk difference are intuitive and clinically meaningful measures that can be readily obtained from any regression model using average marginal effects. Statistical summary measures or graphical displays that incorporate prevalence of risk factors can also be used to better identify the most important contributors to a target condition.