It might be different in medicine, but in psychology secondary outcomes are those that occur as a result of the primary outcomes? So tertiary outcomes are those that result from secondary outcomes. These all have equal importance and you can't have one without the others. These terms are commonly used in epidemiology, where the primary outcome is diagnosis: identifying the existence of a disease and its causes; the secondary outcome is establishing an effective treatment and the tertiary outcome is cure and eradication of the disease. What these terms actually mean in medical research and clinical trials depends on the purposes of the research but this link gives
examples:
http://www.mja.com.au/public/issues/176_10_200502/geb10185_fm.html
Hi everybody,
Could someone explain to me the difference between secondary and tertiary outcomes in a trial? I know that
primary outcomes are the ones that investigators use to do their power analysis, and that secondary ones are other outcomes of interest. But what is a tertiary outcome? One that's deemed less important? I'm preparing a talk on the FOCUS trial (liberal vs. restrictive transfusion for hip fracture surgery), and they list a few prespecified tertiary study outcomes.
Thanks for your help.