Interpreting Odds and Risk and Understanding the Difference: Linking Evidence to Practice

Categorical outcomes are most often reported in terms of relative risk or odds ratios. Interpreting what these metrics mean can be difficult for clinicians, and researchers often make mistakes in published papers. Key points to understand include the following: odds ratios cannot be interpreted in terms of likelihood of an outcome, in fact they have no intuitive meaning for a patient; relative risks and odds ratios are heavily influenced by how common or rare the outcome is; and an odds ratio will always be larger than a risk ratio from the same data. <i>J Orthop Sports Phys Ther 2025;55(4):1-2. Epub 26 Feb 2025. doi: 10.2519/jospt.2025.0701</i>.