Here’s One Jargony Business Consultant Word We Actually Like
The word “material” points to a useful concept, and provides a welcome corrective to an obsessive and misguided focus on statistical significance.
This DIY Tool Promises Statistically Significant Research
Here is a sly little test I recommend giving the next researcher who offers up their help on your next quantitative survey. Ask if they have ever used a DIY survey tool, and what advice they would give you about sample size based on this selection tool you looked at from one of the largest…
Statistically Significant Sample Sizes
There are no magic numbers for sample size. There is no such thing as a statistically significant sample. Unfortunately, those two words—statistically significant—are bandied about with such abandon that they are quickly losing their meaning. Even people who should know better (the data wonks at Google Surveys should know better, right?) are saying ridiculous things…
Six Things to Know about P-Values
Whenever I write a research report, I feel strongly ambivalent about flagging data as “statistically significant.” If possible, I try to avoid it altogether. Why? Because p-values and concepts of statistical significance are often misunderstood, misused, and misleading. Indeed, the problem is so prevalent that one well-respected scientific journal in social psychology (Basic and Applied…
P-Hacking and Other Bad Research Practices
Leave it to the National Science Foundation to keep me hip on current research lingo. A report published last May (with the very unhip title Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences Perspectives on Robust and Reliable Science) offered this definition of an edgy new term in research called p-hacking: Generating many different sets of results and…
Stat Testing: A (Too) Easy Crutch
Those of us who do a lot of survey research spend tons of time poring over statistics and reading data tables. And no matter what all the latest clever tools promise, there is no shortcut to reading page after page after page of data or tables or charts, and discerning the patterns or lack thereof.…