Week 5 discussion
Statistical Significance and Meaningfulness
Once you start to understand how exciting the world of statistics
can be, it is tempting to fall into the trap of chasing statistical
significance. That is, you may be tempted always to look for relationships that
are statistically significant and believe they are valuable solely because of
their significance. Although statistical hypothesis testing does help you
evaluate claims, it is important to understand the limitations of statistical
significance and to interpret the results within the context of the research
and its pragmatic, “real world” application.
As a scholar-practitioner, it is important for you to
understand that just because a hypothesis test indicates a relationship exists
between an intervention and an outcome, there is a difference between groups,
or there is a correlation between two constructs, it does not always provide a
default measure for its importance. Although relationships are significant,
they can be very minute relationships, very small differences, or very weak
correlations. In the end, we need to ask whether the relationships or differences
observed are large enough that we should make some practical change in policy
or practice.
For this Discussion, you will explore statistical significance
and meaningfulness.
To prepare for this Discussion:
Review the Learning Resources related to hypothesis testing,
meaningfulness, and statistical significance.
Review Magnusson’s web blog found in the Learning Resources
to further your visualization and understanding of statistical power and
significance testing.
Review the American Statistical Association’s press release
and consider the misconceptions and misuse of p-values.
Consider the scenario:
A research paper claims a meaningful contribution to the
literature based on finding statistically significant relationships between
predictor and response variables. In the footnotes, you see the following
statement, “given this research was exploratory in nature, traditional levels
of significance to reject the null hypotheses were relaxed to the .10 level.”
By Day 3
Post your response to the scenario in which you critically
evaluate this footnote. As a reader/reviewer, what response would you provide
to the authors about this footnote?
Be sure to support your Main Post and Response Post with
reference to the week’s Learning Resources and other scholarly evidence in APA
Style.
By Day 5
Respond to at least one of your colleagues’ posts and
explain the benefits and consequences of the “relaxed” level of significance.
Click on the Reply button below to reveal the textbox for
entering your message. Then click on the Submit button to post your message.
