1 Bureau of Handicapped Children, Health and Welfare Building, Hazen Drive, Concord, NH 03301
To the Editor.
I wish to congratulate Drs. Teele, Klein, and Rosner on their study of otitis media with effusion (Pediatrics 1984;74:282-287). However, in their interpretation of the results, I think they are confusing statistical significance with clinical significance. They report a small, but statistically significant difference in scores on several speech and language tests for their sample as a whole (N = 200) for different time periods of effusions. They do not report how many of the children in each group were delayed enough to require speech therapy (clinical significance).