Statistical and Nonstatistical Significance
- 1 April 2007
- journal article
- review article
- Published by Ovid Technologies (Wolters Kluwer Health) in Quality Management in Health Care
- Vol. 16 (2), 104-112
- https://doi.org/10.1097/01.qmh.0000267447.55500.57
Abstract
Quality improvement professionals have to decide whether a change has led to improvement. This is typically done through testing the statistical significance of the findings. In this article, we explore controversies surrounding statistical significance testing with attention to contemporary criticism of bad practice resulting from the misuse of statistical significance testing. Most statistical significance tests use tests (eg, F, chi) with known distributions with the P values used as the main evidence to evaluate whether tests are statistically significant. The primary conclusion of this article is that the P value alone as a measure of statistical significance does not give sufficient information about testing of hypotheses. When it is coupled with other measures, however, such as the point estimation of the effect size and the use of a confidence interval around it, the combination of these statistics can provide a more thorough explanation of statistical testing. This article offers recommendations for process improvement investigators as to when to appropriately apply and not to apply statistical significance testing.Keywords
This publication has 24 references indexed in Scilit:
- Correcting effect sizes computed from factor analysis of variance for use in meta-analysis.Psychological Methods, 1997
- Computing contrasts, effect sizes, and counternulls on other people's published data: General procedures for research consumers.Psychological Methods, 1996
- The appropriate use of null hypothesis testing.Psychological Methods, 1996
- The earth is round (p < .05).American Psychologist, 1994
- The Pivotal Role of Replication in Psychological Research: Empirically Evaluating the Replicability of Sample ResultsJournal of Personality, 1994
- On Statistical TestingEducational Researcher, 1987
- The Significance of Statistical Significance Tests in Marketing ResearchJournal of Marketing Research, 1983
- Theoretical risks and tabular asterisks: Sir Karl, Sir Ronald, and the slow progress of soft psychology.Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 1978
- The test of significance in psychological research.Psychological Bulletin, 1966
- Tests of Significance Considered as EvidenceJournal of the American Statistical Association, 1942